THE ELECTION MACHINE ISSUE
As many have read and/or heard about, the machines used to process and count our votes have been found to have many vulnerabilities and may likely aid or cause algorithms to affect election results. Many experts have given their informed opinion on these vulnerabilities. For instance, in this video cyber threat expert & space systems operational tester, Colonel Shawn Smith, provides an excellent overview of just how open to interference these systems are. You can fast forward to the 7:00 minute mark through min 20 approximately:
https://frankspeech.com/video/return-hand-counting-missouri-elections-webinar
In summary, he explains that the cyber threats from foreign nation states are more serious than most people can imagine. Meanwhile, there is not a voting system in use in the US that is manufactured entirely in the US. Most are manufactured entirely outside the country with non-US components; there is no supply chain security nor any protection during manufacture.
He goes on to explain that any sense of security offered by the voting systems certification by “accredited labs” is completely false and he has zero doubt our systems have not been properly tested. In his conversations with Clay Parikh, Army cyber security tester with 9 years’ experience as one of the only security testers for the Voting Systems Testing Lab, Clay informed him he was only allowed to do basic compliance testing and was not allowed to test to the standards used by the DoD. He found many vulnerabilities quickly and easily within 5-10 minutes, and sometimes in as quickly as 2 ½ minutes. While he identified and reported 100s of vulnerabilities, no corrective action was taken and the voting systems were certified anyway.
In addition, no machines are certified to standards newer than 2005, despite the many advancements in technology in the last 18 years. Also of concern, these machines are given to public officials with no cyber security background. So again, it appears the systems are designed and set up to be vulnerable.
Here in Florida, we have the same issues around questionable certifications, using outdated and insufficient standards. The certifications themselves are more than 2 years old. The last certification update to the ES&S system was on May 16, 2019 and was necessitated by a modem upgrade on the DS200 from 3G to 4G, proving once again that the voting machines, really computers, could potentially connect to the internet. Certification memo can be seen here:
https://files.floridados.gov/media/701562/ess-evs-release-4530-version-3-memo.pdf
Another question is whether, in accepting Federal funds under section 251, Florida has a legal obligation to comply with EAC (Election Assistance Commission) certification standards which require new certification every 2 years. At least one SOE has claimed Florida has no obligation to follow EAC rules. The EAC also accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, as well as audits the use of HAVA funds. However, none of the machines used in Florida (or in California, Alabama, most of New England and several other states) show being certified by the EAC.
https://www.eac.gov/voting-equipment/system-certification-process
If in fact the acceptance of Federal funds does bind Florida, as one would think it does, to EAC standards, then do we have grounds for removing the machines on the basis that, contrary to EAC rules, they all contain a device that can connect them to the internet? We know for certain that the ES&S machines used in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and many other counties do contain a modem, as tabulation results are transmitted on a private network to the SoE on Election Day. This would result in the machines becoming unusable in any future election or else in them all having to have their modems removed so that their data could only be collected in situ or via a thumb drive.
With over 650,000 (some say over 1 million) lines of proprietary, black box code, one wonders how these machines could ever be reliably certified anyway. And while we would like to think elections in Florida are free and fair, we can actually look at the results themselves to prove they are not.
STATISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE RESULTS
In recent 2022 Primary races in Palm Beach County, it is apparent that an algorithm (or similar) affected results. Thanks to work by a pattern recognition expert and statistician, P. Evans, we see the percentage of votes quickly ramping up above the 99.99% confidence interval for the “chosen candidate” after the 15th voter in every precinct. See chart below for the District 23 Democrat primary race. Moskowitz share of the votes (percentage of the votes = blue line) quickly climbs above the dotted red line area where, based on the initial votes, they are statistically predicted to fall with 99.99% confidence. In other words, statistically there is a .01% (or 1 in 10,000) chance this vote pattern occurred organically, without manipulation.
This shows the ongoing cumulative share of the votes after X number of people have voted in every precinct. The numbers across the bottom show where 10 people have voted in every precinct, 100, 1000. The share (%) of votes has to ramp up by an incredible amount to affect the cumulative (running total) share of the votes to this degree.
We see it again in this Republican primary for District 22. You can still see the red 99.99% confidence interval for the winning candidate Dan Franzese. Again, his share of the votes (blue line) quickly began to jump above the red outlined area after the 15th voter in every precinct and continued to ramp up from there. This is not normal. Again, based on the initial results from the first 14 voters in every precinct, you would expect him to get between roughly 24 & 29 % of the vote with 99.99% confidence.
Many other races have been found to be similarly affected resulting in impossible or extremely unlikely results. And how can you have many races achieving results with a .01% (1 in 10,000) chance of happening?
I imagine this is causing many to question results from 2020, and rightly so. While Trump managed to win Florida, it was likely only accomplished by requiring results to be reported by midnight on election night. You can plainly see in the official results that an algorithm impacted and set results in Florida and many other states. In this video, Florida’s results are reviewed and explained:
https://rumble.com/v11y9h0-floridas-election-results-were-also-compromised.html
This longer video explains many other anomalies seen in the election and gives background information on the results themselves:
https://rumble.com/vpjx64-election-enigma.html
You can find these and other videos on the Enigma Intel channel on Rumble.com.
What we see in the official SCYTL election results are vote batch percentages that suddenly begin to perfectly match the total vote percentages. Say the total votes were split 48.5% for Trump and 51.5% for Biden, then the next reported batch would come in at that same 48.5% for Trump and 51.5% for Biden. It would be a strange coincidence for this to happen once, but for it to happen again and again is an impossibility from a statistical and probability standpoint. Also, to have many consecutive batches come in at the same exact percentages for the candidates is just as improbable, really impossible, and is done using fractional votes. Even 1 or 2 votes get divided up by the same matching percentages. There should not be fractional votes in the first place. These are questions that need to be answered by SCYTL, headquartered in Barcelona, Spain and with an R&D office in Tampa, Florida. Yes, they are right here in Florida. SCYTL, along with Clarity Elections, is responsible for election results reporting. You will often see their name at the bottom of websites, such as Secretary of States’, where election results are reported, as in these screenshots.
On top of this, Clint Curtis, a registered Democrat & former computer programmer for multiple federal agencies, testified to Congress in 2004 that he was contracted to write a prototype program for Florida Rep. Tom Feeney that would “flip the vote 51-49 to whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win”. Asked if such a program was detectable by election officials, Curtis said they would “never see it”. He also testified before the Arizona Elections Committee just last week that any computer-operated voting machine is vulnerable to tampering. Fixing election results using a program, he said, is “very easy to do” but “hard to stop”.[1]
VULNERABLILITIES
We could speak endlessly about the endless vulnerabilities in the election systems used in this country. Everything from almost nonexistent SQL database security to wireless connections, to USB drives. We know the tabulators have wireless modems and connect to an intranet. What stops them from being remotely accessed through that same modem? We know the voter check-in system is constantly checking the voter database to confirm voters are eligible, haven’t yet voted and record that they have. Vote tabulators are programmed to receive information from removable media, namely USB drives. These USB drives are proprietary to the machine company. We have no way of knowing what is on the USB drives. At some point a USB drive is programmed and requires being on some sort of network, open or closed. Even when on a closed network while programming a USB drive, it is extremely vulnerable. The military does not allow use of USB ports. Per elections system technical expert Bennie Smith, USB ports and their devices are the most threatening equipment that can harm a computer.
Jake Stauffer, a former cyber analyst for the U.S. Air Force ‘looked inside the ES&S DS200 tabulator… “What we found…it was staggering. There were multiple vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to get the highest level of access to the system. We found multiple operating system patches missing – what that means is that an attacker can inject code into that system, execute that with the possibility of receiving some sort of control. When ES&S discovered that we were not using their testing plans, they were appalled when we used our own testing plan and found these vulnerabilities, they pretty much told us that they had their own team, that they were not interested. How can a vendor sell a voting system with this many vulnerabilities? I can’t find the answer.”
Just last week, there were articles by The Gateway Pundit and The Washington Post about the Fox News “Bombshell Legal Filing” which exposes that Dominion executives knew their system was riddled with issues. And just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Dominion’s Director of Product Strategy and Security, Eric Coomer, acknowledged in private that “our shit is just riddled with bugs.” Indeed, Coomer had been castigating Dominion’s failures for years. In 2019, Coomer noted that “our products suck.” He lamented that “[a]lmost all” of Dominion’s technological failings were “due to our complete f— up in installation.” It goes on, “And in another instance, he identified a “*critical* bug leading to INCORRECT results.” Ex.H4, Coomer Email (Jan. 5, 2018). He went on to note: “It does not get much worse than that.” Id. And while many companies might have resolved their errors, Coomer lamented that “we don’t address our weaknesses effectively!”” [2]
Not only do employees of the companies know about the issues, an older study out of the University of Pennsylvania published years ago, in 2009, noted extreme deficiencies. From the report, Security Evaluation of ES&S Voting Machines and Election Management System, Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania:
https://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~aviv/papers/ess-evt08.pdf
Abstract:
This paper summarizes a security analysis of the DRE and optical scan voting systems manufactured by Election Systems and Software (ES&S), as used in Ohio (and many other jurisdictions inside and outside the US). We found numerous exploitable vulnerabilities in nearly every component of the ES&S system. These vulnerabilities enable attacks that could alter or forge precinct results, install corrupt firmware, and erase audit records. (emphasis added) Our analysis focused on architectural issues in which the interactions between various software and hardware modules leads to systemic vulnerabilities that do not appear to be easily countered with election procedures or software updates.
And in Section 4 Systemic and Architectural Issues:
There are fundamental security deficiencies throughout the ES&S Unity EMS, iVotronic DRE and M100 optical scanner software and hardware. Virtually every mechanism for assuring the integrity of precinct results and for protecting the back-end tallying system can be circumvented. Election results can be tampered within the ES&S system by exploiting any of a number of different vulnerabilities that were discovered. The normal access provided to individual precinct poll workers (and in some cases to voters themselves) is sufficient to conduct attacks that alter county-wide election results and that, in some cases, cannot be detected or recovered from through audits or recounts. Perhaps more importantly, we show how the interaction of the various software and hardware modules leads to systemic vulnerabilities that can spread throughout the system. There is a strong potential for practical attacks that propagate “virally” from the field back to the county election management system. That is, a single circumvented piece of precinct hardware (such as a memory card returned from a precinct for vote tallying) can effectively “take over” the county-wide back-end tally system, alter county-wide results reported in the current election, and then corrupt the installed firmware of additional precinct hardware in subsequent elections. The broad scope of such attacks provides great leverage to the adversary and can be extraordinarily difficult to detect, trace, or recover from. (emphasis added)
Also of note is that by knowing and not disclosing these issues, Dominion likely violated Florida Statute 101.56065. Voting system defects; disclosure; investigations; penalties:
(2)(a) On January 1 of every odd-numbered year, each vendor shall file a written disclosure with the department identifying any known defect in the voting system or the fact that there is no known defect, (emphasis added) the effect of any defect on the operation and use of the approved voting system, and any known corrective measures to cure a defect, including, but not limited to, advisories and bulletins issued to system users.
This statute also states “If a vendor fails to file a required disclosure for a voting system previously approved by the department, that system may not be sold, leased, or used for elections in the state (emphasis added) until it has been submitted for examination and approval and adopted for use pursuant to s. 101.5605. The department shall provide written notice to all supervisors of elections that the system is no longer approved.”
I believe by their admittance of issues by their Director of Product Strategy & Security, unless Dominion filed a report on January 1st of 2019, 2021 or 2023 disclosing such defects, our Department of State needs to immediately suspend use of their system in the State of Florida. Likewise, if issues exist within the ES&S system and they have not filed a similar disclosure report, their system should likewise be suspended from use by the DOS. If issues have been disclosed, what has been done to ensure they have been satisfactorily addressed and why was their use never suspended?
Lastly, I want to quote Florida Statute 101.015: The division (of Elections) shall also develop methods to determine the will of the public with respect to voting systems. Many counties around the country have voted or moved to remove election machines and return to manual hand counting. How many Floridians have lost faith in computerized election systems? A CNN poll from last year showed only 16% of those surveyed were very confident that our elections reflect the will of the people. The state needs to wake up to the fact that the systems are (easily) compromised, our election results prove it and voters know it.
[1] Choate, Carson. “Writing Code to Flip Votes is ‘Very Easy to Do’ but ‘Hard to Stop,’ Says Democrat Programmer”, Western Journal, February 18, 2023. https://www.westernjournal.com/writing-code-flip-votes-easy-hard-stop-says-democratic-computer-programmer/
[2] Joe Hoft. “BREAKING – “OUR SH*T IS JUST RIDDLED WITH BUGS” – FOX News Filing Shows DOMINION Knew Its Voting Systems Had Major Security Issues”, The Gateway Pundit, February 17, 2023, https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/breaking-sht-just-riddled-bugs-fox-news-filing-shows-dominion-knew-voting-systems-major-security-issues/
