A computer server central to the 2016 election was quietly wiped clean by its custodians just after a lawsuit was filed against election officials in the US state of Georgia
The data was destroyed on July 7 by technicians at the Centre for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State Uni, which runs the state's election system
The data wipe was revealed in an email sent last week from an assistant state attorney-general to plaintiffs in the lawsuit. More emails obtained in a public records request confirmed the wipe
The lawsuit, filed on July 3 by a group of election reform advocates, aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily criticized election tech
The server, which was a statewide staging location for key election-related data, made national headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a security hole that was not fixed 6 months after he reported it to election authorities
Republican Sec.of State denies responsibility
It is not clear who ordered the server's data irretrievably erased
The Kennesaw election centre answers to Georgia's Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, a Republican who is running for governor in 2018 and is the main defendant
A spokeswoman for the his office said on Wednesday (local time) that "we did not have anything to do with this decision", adding the office also had no advance warning of the move
The centre's director, Michael Barnes, referred questions to the university's press office, which declined to comment
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who are mostly Georgia voters, want to scrap the state's 15-year-old vote-management system — particularly its 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting machines, hackable devices that do not use paper ballots or keep hardcopy proof of voter intent
The plaintiffs were counting on an independent security review of the Kennesaw server, which held electronic poll book and other elections staging data for counties, to demonstrate the system's unreliability
So Sup Forums who did it and why?
