In an absolutely shocking (but not really) development, custodians of the Georgia election servers consciously and deliberately chose to wipe (aka, destroy evidence) their servers just days after a lawsuit was filed by a group of election reform advocates. WOW.
The AP reports that the data was destroyed on or about July 7th, just 4 days after the suit was filed. The server was in the possession of the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which is in charge of running the state's election system. What are they trying to hide??? In June, just before the suit was filed, security experts found and publicized a "gaping security hole" in their election security....a hole that wasn't patched for at least 6 months.
The Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, swears he had nothing do with it. I mean, why would he? He is only a Republican running for governor in 2018, so any impropriety conducted under his watch would be best hidden. Duh.
Kemp issued a statement swearing he had no "involvement nor advanced warnings of the decision" and blamed the server wipe on "the undeniable ineptitude" at the Kennesaw State elections center. Wow. For it's part, the elections center says wiping servers is "standard operating procedure" and had nothing to do with the suit. They refuse to say who ordered them to wipe it, though. Kemp? Kobach? A certain racist elf in the DOJ? An orange toddler? Could be anyone!
The lawsuit is based on the premise that the elections were compromised by hackers and therefore both the November election and the June 20th congressional runoff for Tom Price's seat were possibly invalid. Of course the GOP would want to hide that, if the hackers tipped the final results in their favor.
There is some good news, at least possibly. The FBI made an "exact data image" of the server in March, so it's possible that the data could be retrieved and evaluated that way for purposes of this lawsuit, if the FBI retained their data image and can be compelled to release a copy of it to the plaintiffs.
Innocent people don't destroy evidence that would exonerate them. Guilty people do.
