Election complaint filed in Spalding County

SPALDING COUNTY, Ga — A complaint has been filed with the Georgia Attorney General’s office alleging possible election wrongdoing in Spalding County.

The complaint was filed with the attorney general’s election fraud division by William Perry of Georgia Ethics Watchdogs. Perry is asking for an investigation into the fact that Spalding Election Board Chairperson Ben Johnson also holds the information technology contract with the county, including the elections division, through his business.

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“This is a bad government decision in terms of the contracting, and it’s potential election fraud on the other end of it,” Perry said.

Johnson’s company, Liberty Technology, has had an IT contract with Spalding County since 2015. A look at public records shows Liberty has made more than $3 million from that contract.

The complaint filed with the attorney general alleges that: “Because of Mr. Johnson’s ability to access and perform work on the equipment without oversight, voters do not know if the equipment has been improperly tampered with.”

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The complaint also includes social media posts by Johnson calling himself an “insurrectionist” and calling the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol a “hoax.”

An internal county email shows that when election systems at a polling place could not connect to the internet last year, leaving voters unable to cast a ballot, it was Liberty Technology that was called in to address the problem.

“This is the chairman of the election board who then troubleshoots when there are problems at the polling places because he has the IT contract,” Perry said.

Spalding County manager Steve Ledbetter told Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Gray that the county is re-bidding for all its service contracts, including IT, to make sure they are all properly and openly bid on. He expects that to be completed by January.

This isn’t the only election controversy Spalding is facing. Last week the state election board launched an investigation into Spalding County, according to State Elections Board chair William Duffey. Duffey said at the Sept. 28 board meeting that the same tech company that copied election data in Coffee County was also considered for work in Spalding County. The agreement was not finalized with Spalding, and Duffey says he doesn’t think data was copied in Spalding.

We reached out to Johnson through his county email addresses and through his business but have not received a response.

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