Brian Kemp’s office orders ‘hacking’ probe of Georgia Democrats on eve of election he’s competing in

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp on Sunday announced an investigation into the state’s Democrats over a “failed attempt to hack the state’s voter registration system” – an extraordinary claim made two days before an election in which he is running against Democrat Stacey Abrams to become governor.

But voters’ rights groups pushed back within hours of the announcement, suggesting the investigation was a political distraction after Democratic officials, among others, alerted authorities over the weekend to security vulnerabilities in the voting system Kemp oversees.

The secretary of state office, which Democrats have accused throughout Kemp’s campaign of manipulating the electoral system for his benefit, announced the investigation Sunday morning with an all-caps headline that appeared directly below a voter’s guide on a government website:

“AFTER FAILED HACKING ATTEMPT, SOS LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO GEORGIA DEMOCRATIC PARTY.”

The attached statement contained no evidence and almost no details on the Democratic Party of Georgia’s “possible cyber crimes,” but said Kemp’s office had launched the investigation Saturday evening and alerted the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

By early Sunday afternoon, however, at least two voters’ rights attorneys called foul on Kemp.

David D. Cross, a D.C. lawyer who represents voters suing Georgia over alleged vulnerabilities in its elections system, forwarded an email between himself and an FBI agent from Saturday, sent before Kemp’s office launched its probe. Cross tells the agent that a Secretary of State website set up for voters to check their registration status and find polling locations may be leaking confidential voter information.

“Thanks!” the agent replies. “We’ll pass the information along to the Secretary of State’s Office for them to evaluate.”

A lawyer with another group, Coalition for Good Governance, told Who What Why that he alerted Kemp’s lawyers to similar issues on Saturday. The outlet reported that Democratic Party of Georgia had also been in contact with election security experts about the potential to hack the state’s systems.

“We alerted the authorities. We expected Mr. Kemp to take action. We were surprised to see the apparent response to that was accusing (the Democrats) of hacking,” Cross told the Washington Post on Sunday.

After those reports were publicized on Sunday, Kemp’s state office partially confirmed them in an update to its original statement on the failed “hack.”

“We opened an investigation into the Democratic Party of Georgia after receiving information from our legal team about failed efforts to breach the online voter registration system and My Voter Page,” reads the news statement. “We are working with our private sector vendors and investigators to review data logs. We have contacted our federal partners and formally requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate these possible cyber crimes. The Secretary of State’s office will release more information as it becomes available.”

The investigation was immediately condemned as a political ploy by Democrats and some commentators, who believe Kemp should not oversee an election in which he is competing.

“Brian Kemp’s scurrilous claims are 100 percent false, and this so-called investigation was unknown to the Democratic Party of Georgia until a campaign operative in Kemp’s official office released a statement this morning,” Rebecca DeHart, executive director of the state Democratic Party, wrote in a statement to reporters. “This is yet another example of abuse of power by an unethical Secretary of State.”

Abrams, who is polling almost neck-and-neck with Kemp, told CNN on Sunday that she had been unaware of her opponent’s investigation into her party.

“He is desperate to turn the conversation away from his failures, from his refusal to honor his commitments, and from the fact that he’s part of a nationwide system of voter suppression,” she said.

In a statement late Sunday, Kemp’s spokesman issued the following statement:

“In an act of desperation, the Democrats tried to expose vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voter registration system. This was a 4th quarter Hail Mary pass that was intercepted in the end zone. Thanks to the systems and protocols established by Secretary of State Brian Kemp, no personal information was breached. These power-hungry radicals should be held accountable for their criminal behavior.”

Voting rights has become a major issue in the campaign, which has drawn national attention because Abrams, 44, if elected, would become the nation’s first black female governor.

Abrams, who four years ago started a nonprofit group whose goal was to sign up hundreds of thousands of unregistered people of color, has clashed repeatedly with Kemp, whom she calls “the architect of voter suppression.” Kemp investigated the group, which Abrams is no longer affiliated with, for fraud but found no wrongdoing.

Kemp, 55, who has argued that the policies are aimed at preventing voter fraud, also has been criticized for having purged more than a million voters from the rolls during the past year. He has rejected calls, including one from former President Jimmy Carter, that he should step down as the state’s top elections official while he is running for governor.

Although lawmakers and elections officials in Republican-controlled states have cited concerns about cheating to enact strict voter registration and identification laws, there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the United States.

Kemp’s office came under intense scrutiny last month, when the Associated Press reported that more than 53,000 voter registration applications – 70 percent of them from African-Americans – had been held up because the identification information was not an “exact match” to other state records, because of discrepancies such as a dropped hyphen in a person’s name.

On Friday a federal judge ordered the state to immediately stop using the rule, saying it would likely lead to violating the voting rights of a large number of people. Less than two weeks ago, in a separate case, a federal ordered elections officials to stop automatically rejecting absentee ballots after advocates filed suit against a Gwinnett County, which threw out hundreds of ballots because of discrepancies in signature or missing addresses.