Judge rules Georgia's electronic voting system too dangerous to use in 2020

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Georgia’s electronic voting system is defective, vulnerable to a foreign government’s hacking, and cannot be used in the 2020 elections.

Judge Amy Totenberg, an Obama appointee to the Northern District of Georgia, ordered the state to stop using its current electronic voting machines by next year’s primaries and demanded officials clean up voter registration databases to ensure eligible voters aren’t shut out of casting ballots.

Georgia was already moving to replace its old system, but the judge’s ruling says it cannot keep the old methods around as a backup should the state fail to transition fast enough.

The ruling also marks the deepest the federal judiciary has delved into trying to shore up American elections systems in the wake of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 campaign.

“Georgia’s current voting equipment, software, election and voter databases, are antiquated, seriously flawed, and vulnerable to failure, breach, contamination, and attack,” Judge Totenberg wrote in her 153-page ruling.

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