ATLANTA — The Georgia Secretary of State’s office is pushing back hard against a man’s claims that he “hacked” the state’s voting system, and warning legislators they are causing mistrust.
In a news release, Raffensperger addressed testimony he heard in the Georgia State Senate’s election hearing on Thursday.
He specifically targeted the claims made by J. Hutton Pulitzer aka Commander Pulitzer, who he identified as a ‘failed treasure hunter’ with ‘no record of military experience.’
In the hearing, Pulitzer alleged that he ‘hacked’ Georgia’s voting system, and now the Secretary of State’s Office is making it clear that he provided zero evidence to back up his claims.
“Fake news is hard enough to combat when mainstream media outlets push it out, but when a small cadre of Georgia legislators do it, it’s a whole different story,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “These legislators need to stop calling their own reelections illegitimate and focus on getting out the vote for the January 5 elections. The mistrust they are sowing is depressing turnout. If Senators Loeffler and Perdue lose on January 5, the Georgia state legislators have only themselves to blame.”
Raffensperger says Thursday wasn’t the first time they used Pulitzer as a witness in an ‘election disinformation filled hearing,’ and that in that case he also made claims about hacking a poll pad without providing any tangible evidence.
Poll pads are the only piece of election infrastructure hooked up to the internet or connected to devices on the internet so election workers can download updated voter lists at check-in. Their WiFi capability is disabled before they are used.
The Secretary of State’s office says touch screens and printers at polling places are never attached to the poll pads and are configured so they can’t be connected to the internet. Further, the scanners that tabulate ballots aren’t connected to the other equipment.
Poll pad creator KnowInk also reputed Pulitzer’s claims. They said, “The assertions made about unauthorized access to our systems are patently false. The man claiming that someone ‘got into’ our systems did not happen according to our forensic analysis. There was no ‘hack,’ there was no ‘back door’ entry, there was no ‘pump and dump,’ and there was no access through a ‘thermostat’ located hundreds of miles away in Savannah.”
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