A top election official in Georgia blamed a Dominion Voting Systems server crash on a Fulton County technician who didn’t follow instructions.
Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, held a press conference on Monday and dispelled rumors that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered Dominion servers to be wiped.
“There were no Dominion issues in Fulton County. There was a Dominion server that crashed because Fulton County literally ignored the basic instructions and the directions of the vendor on this one,” Sterling said. The crash caused a recount in the county, which was requested across the state by President Trump, to be delayed.
According to Sterling, Fulton County should have been using its central server for the state’s presidential election recount but instead chose to use the wrong server.
“What they did to kind — cutting a corner, they first, their intention was, ‘We’re going to use the express server as the one we upload all the stuff into,'” Sterling said, adding that a Dominion employee told the county officials that they could not do that without crashing the server.
“Fulton County, one particular technician ignored the directives of our office, ignored the opinion and directions from the vendor, and caused this situation by ignoring that and choosing to go down their own path, even though they were told don’t do that. So now, they’re going to be forced to rescan ballots,” Sterling continued. “It has nothing to do with servers being wiped. Nobody directed that. That’s just a lie. It’s made up out of whole cloth. And it is the kind of stuff we are having to deal with.”
Georgia certified the results of the election on Nov. 20 after completing a full recount by hand, giving the state’s 16 Electoral College votes to President-elect Joe Biden. Trump’s team requested another recount, and the deadline for counties to finish their work is Wednesday.
Sidney Powell, a former member of Trump’s election legal team, has accused Georgia state officials of being involved in a national voter fraud conspiracy, an allegation Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has denounced as “absolutely absurd.” Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, companies Powell has repeatedly criticized as being vulnerable to hacking, have also denied allegations of fraud.
The server crash explained by Sterling happened on Sunday, delaying Trump’s requested second recount. Technicians were then dispatched to Fulton County to resolve the error, which was first reported by WXIA-TV, a local NBC affiliate.
On Sunday night, U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten, a George W. Bush appointee, ordered Kemp and Raffensperger to explain why they opposed the Trump campaign’s request to inspect voting machines the president’s team claims may have been rigged in favor of Biden. The two were given until Wednesday to file a response. The judge also ordered officials not to erase or alter any data pertaining to the election on the voting machines in Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee counties.
During an interview with Fox Business host Lou Dobbs on Monday, Powell said that on Sunday, “someone went down to the Fulton center where the votes and the Dominion machines were” and “removed” the server. Powell added she does not know where the server is located.
It was not clear whether Powell saw Sterling’s explanation for the server’s crash.
The Battle for the White House: @SidneyPowell1 celebrates a court victory for @realDonaldTrump in Georgia which stops Dominion voting machines in 3 counties from being wiped. #MAGA #AmericaFirst #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/YYEOjp7PON
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) November 30, 2020
