Georgia A federal judge on Monday (Dec. 7) dismissed conservative attorney Sidney Powell’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of a presidential election, saying there is no jurisdiction over federal elections. The founder of a Georgia civic group that advocates election integrity said, “You’re wrong.
Judge Timothy Batten ruled not on the merits, but on the grounds that “lawsuits do not belong in federal court.
Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA, a Georgia-based civic group that advocates for election integrity, was a witness in the lawsuit and provided sworn testimony to Powell. In an interview with the Chronicle, he called Judge Patton “cowardly.
Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA, said, “My opinion is that the judge is too cowardly to ensure that the presidential election is conducted honestly.
Fevolito further stated that Judge Barton’s statement that “federal courts do not have jurisdiction over presidential elections” is false, since last year a federal judge ruled against the voting machines used in Georgia.
Fevolito: “U.S. federal judges have jurisdiction over federal elections. This has been proven by Judge Dottenberg’s ruling last year. Judge Dottenberg barred Georgia from using the old (voting) system.”
Fevolito founded VoterGA, Georgia’s leading election integrity advocacy group, in 2006. Fevolito had written a letter to the Secretary of State in 2002, pointing out that the electronic voting system being evaluated at the time (not the Dominion voting system used today) might be unconstitutional because it could not produce verifiable, auditable, recountable results.
But the Secretary of State ignored it. The State Legislature changed the law to allow the use of this voting system, which lacks independent auditing capabilities. The Georgia Supreme Court dismissed VoterGA’s lawsuit and allowed the illegal voting system to be used for 18 years.
In August 2019, U.S. Federal Judge Amy Totenberg ordered the state of Georgia to stop using the electronic voting machines beginning in 2019 and expressed concern about Georgia’s ability to roll out new voting equipment in time for the March 2020 presidential primaries.
In his ruling, Dottenberg also ordered the Georgia Secretary of State’s office to develop a plan to address errors and access problems with voter registration databases and to require paper copies of poll books in every precinct.
Fevolito told the Chronicle that the Dominion voting system in use today has similar problems to the old system and should be considered unconstitutional.
One of the allegations in Powell’s lawsuit is that the Dominion voting machines allegedly transferred Trump’s ballot to Biden. According to the county-by-county results provided by Fevolito in Georgia, the manual recount showed a net increase of 496 votes in Trump’s lead compared to the initial count, or 0.0099% of the total votes cast. In Ware County, Kawakami’s lead increased by a net 74 votes, or 0.52% of the total votes cast.
Fevolito argues that while this number may seem small, it shows that fraud may have occurred. Voters such as Fevolito have asked the government to conduct a forensic examination of the Dominion voting machines, but government officials have so far not agreed.
VoterGA, a civic group founded by Fevolito, issued a press release on Dec. 3 stating that Georgia Elections Director Chris Harvey had instructed counties on Nov. 16 to certify the results of all Dominion voting machines without regard to any potential counting errors. Subsequently, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered counties to reset the machines for the federal Senate election, which will destroy evidence of possible malware in the Dominion system.
The VoterGA press release states that Raffensperger forced Georgia counties to enter their audit results into a centralized ARLO system instead of the counties’ own databases. This practice violates generally accepted U.S. election reporting principles. This leads to a curious situation: counties count their own votes, but are required to inform the Secretary of State’s office of the results, rather than the counties reporting the results to the Secretary of State.
VoterGA surveyed all 159 counties and found that about 150 of them did not have the vote totals to conduct their own manual audits.
Under the circumstances, Fevolito argued that Secretary of State Raffensperger’s conclusion that the audit found no election fraud was suspect.
Another allegation in the lawsuit filed by Powell is that Fulton County’s absentee ballots were allegedly fraudulent. Feveredo revealed that four Fulton County counters gave sworn affidavits alleging that certain ballots were illegal ballots. They do not appear to have been filled out with writing instruments, but rather copied.
Feveredo, co-founder of the civic group VoterGA: “Should he force Fulton County to show the public the absentee ballots they processed so we can determine if any of the ballots were fraudulent? How many ballots are fraudulent? He should also order a forensic examination of the Dominion voting system servers and equipment in Ware County.”
Fevolito told the Chronicle that on Dec. 10, the Georgia House of Representatives will hold a hearing on election fraud. At that time, he and other voters will request an inspection of absentee ballots in Fulton County.
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