Lawyers defending Georgia’s secretary of state in federal litigation against a sought-after return to paper ballots claim that plaintiff voters engaged in “a deluge of innuendo” in seeking more than $300,000 in sanctions against the state.

Special assistant state attorneys general defending Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and the state elections board contend the requested sanctions are not warranted because they never refused to hand over the obsolete databases still used by the state to create ballots and tabulate votes.