A handful of Georgia voters and the civil rights group Coalition for Good Governance sought sanctions in a Georgia federal court on Friday against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other state election officials, having unsuccessfully requested the relief in late 2019.
The plaintiffs said they were told by defendants that electronic voting software databases and servers for Georgia's old Global Election Management System (GEMS) were unique and had to be protected, and therefore couldn't be provided through discovery in the case. But plaintiffs said that was a lie.
"After an extensive and costly discovery battle, the production of Georgia's GEMS databases confirmed what plaintiffs had been arguing throughout — the purportedly confidential GEMS databases were identical to publicly-available GEMS databases from other jurisdictions and risked no exposure of confidential information," plaintiffs said in their motion.
David D. Cross of Morrison & Foerster LLP, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told Law360 they were seeking just over $290,000in their sanctions bid for more than 250 hours of attorney work, as well as about $112,000 in expenses associated with discovery of the voting databases and servers.
Cross said plaintiffs are owed millions of dollars in attorney fees and costs overall.
"The state forced us and the court to deal with this in several teleconferences and several rounds of briefing plus additional calls and correspondence between the parties — all based on repeated misrepresentations," Cross said on Friday.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, who is overseeing the 2017 case, denied plaintiffs' original sanctions bid over the databases and servers in August, preferring to address attorney fees and costs more broadly at the end of the litigation, the plaintiffs said.
They urged her to reconsider, saying that their renewed motion for attorney fees and costs is pending and they deserve relief now.
"Apparently only sanctions will curb state defendants' obstruction and lack of candor in this litigation, which have only increased since the court deferred ruling on the request in plaintiffs' prior sanctions motion," the plaintiffs said. "State defendants ultimately were forced to admit they misled plaintiffs and this court, wasting enormous time, money and resources with multiple calls, filings and court conferences to resolve their meritless objections and to lay bare their false allegations."
Raffensperger's office and defense counsel declined to comment on Friday.
The parties are already awaiting several other decisions in the case, which is before the Eleventh Circuit on the defendants' appeal of Judge Totenberg's order in late September for the state to provide paper backups of updated voter information for the Nov. 3 election.
Judge Totenberg is also expected to decide soon whether to certify for appeal her July ruling that the voters have standing to pursue claims that Georgia's voting system is flawed, in light of recent dismissals of suits targeting alleged flaws in the 2020 presidential election.
State defendants urged Judge Totenberg to let the Eleventh Circuit decide standing after she was prompted to raise the issue following the dismissal of several similar suits for lack of standing, in which Georgia voters had also challenged the security and effectiveness of the state's voting system.
The voters are represented by David D. Cross, Veronica Ascarrunz, Eileen M. Brogan, Lyle F. Hedgecock, Mary G. Kaiser and Robert W. Manoso of Morrison & Foerster LLP; Halsey G. Knapp Jr. and Adam M. Sparks of Krevolin & Horst LLC, and Cary Ichter of Ichter Davis LLC.
Coalition for Good Governance is represented by Bruce P. Brown of Bruce P. Brown Law LLC and Robert A. McGuire III of Robert McGuire Law Firm.
The election officials are represented by Vincent R. Russo, Josh Belinfante, Carey A. Miller and Alexander F. Denton of Robbins Ross Alloy Belinfante Littlefield LLC, and Bryan P. Tyson, Jonathan D. Crumly, James A. Balli, R. Dal Burton, Diane F. LaRoss, Bryan F. Jacoutot and Loree A. Paradise of Taylor English Duma LLP.
The case is Curling et al. v. Raffensperger et al., case number 1:17-cv-02989, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
--Editing by Regan Estes.
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