A server and its backups, believed to be key to a pending federal lawsuit filed against Georgia election officials, was thoroughly deleted according to e-mails recently released under a public records request.

Georgia previously came under heavy scrutiny after a researcher discovered significant problems with his home state’s voting system. A lawsuit soon followed in state court, asking the court to annul the results of the June 20 special election for Congress and to prevent Georgia’s existing computer-based voting system from being used again. The case, Curling v. Kemp, was filed in Fulton County Superior Court on July 3.

As the Associated Press reported Thursday, the data was initially destroyed on July 7 by the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, the entity tasked with running the Peach State’s elections.

The new e-mails, which were sent by the Coalition for Good Governance to Ars, show that Chris Dehner, one of the Information Security staffers, e-mailed his boss, Stephen Gay, to say that the two backup servers had been "degaussed three times."

No one from Kennesaw State University, including Dehner or Gay, immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment as to who ordered the servers to be wiped and why it was done.

The e-mail from Dehner to Gay came the same day—August 9, 2017—that the lawsuit was moved from state to federal court. Neither the judge in state court nor the judge in federal court appears to have issued a "preservation order," which would have required the state to hang on to the servers.

This level of deletion is common practice in the industry when hardware is to be retired. However, absent any other backups or earlier forensic images, the deletion will likely frustrate any further investigations.

"That is nuke drive," Nicholas Weaver, a computer science researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, told Ars. "Degaussing literally destroys the drive because it not only erases data, it erases the synchronization information on the drive."

According to the AP, the FBI made a forensic image of the relevant server in March 2017 as part of its investigation. Atlanta FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett "would not say whether that image still exists." Neither Emmett nor the FBI field office in Atlanta immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment.

Georgia officials have until October 30 to file their latest formal reply in the ongoing case. For now, no oral arguments have been scheduled.

UPDATE 4:57pm ET: Marilyn Marks, the executive director of the Coalition, a group that is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, told Ars that she had issued a litigation hold notice to the defendants.

"They know that they are required to preserve all records when they are sued," she e-mailed. "They don’t need court order. Even IF the SOS office didn’t have three dozen attorneys to tell them to preserve the records, they got this attached letter from us on July 10 and destroyed the second server hard drive on August 9."

UPDATE 11:40pm ET: Tammy Demel, a spokeswoman for Kennesaw State University, e-mailed Ars a statement.

"In March 2017, a Center for Election Systems’ server involved in an alleged data breach was turned over to the FBI. While the server was in the possession of the Bureau, a forensic image or copy of all the data on the server was made and held by the agency. Following the notification from the FBI that no data was compromised and the investigation was closed, the server was returned to the University’s Information Technology Services group and securely stored. In accordance with standard operating procedures, an after-action report was prepared. This report outlined hardware improvements for the Center, including repurposing the impacted server and surplusing servers that had exceeded end of life. As part of the report, the original server that had been investigated by the FBI was designated to be repurposed, and the drives on the server were erased and the server made available for alternative uses."

"As noted by the subpoena filed today by the Attorney General’s Office, the data and information that was on the server in question has been and is still in the possession of the FBI and will remain available to the parties in the event it is determined to be relevant in the pending litigation."