Voting experts warn of 'serious threats' for 2024 from election equipment software breaches

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: PBS News Hour/AP

Dec 5, 2023 8:55 PM EST

ATLANTA (AP) — An effort to access voting system software in several states and provide it to allies of former President Donald Trump as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election has raised “serious threats” ahead of next year’s presidential contest, according to a group of experts who urged federal agencies to investigate.

The letter sent by nearly two dozen computer scientists, election security experts and voter advocacy organizations asks for a federal probe and a risk assessment of voting machines used throughout the country, saying the software breaches have “urgent implications for the 2024 election and beyond.” The breaches affected voting equipment made by two companies that together count over 70 percent of the votes cast across the country, according to the letter.

“The multistate effort to unlawfully obtain copies of voting system software poses serious threats to election security and national security and constitutes a potential criminal conspiracy of enormous consequences,” the group wrote in a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, special counsel Jack Smith, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “We must protect our most sacred tenet of democracy — the security of our vote.”

The letter, sent to the agencies late Monday, was organized by the left-leaning group Free Speech for People, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on election and campaign finance reforms. The group also has filed challenges in a handful of states seeking to ban Trump from the ballot in 2024 under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. The FBI, Justice Department and Smith’s office declined comment. The cybersecurity agency did not immediately respond.

Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/voting-experts-warn-of-serious-threats-for-2024-from-election-equipment-software-breaches

[mopinko]

1. smells like disinfo to me.

[LymphocyteLover]

2. why?

[mopinko]

7. cuz i'm suspicious of anyone casting doubt on elections.

i dont necessarily think they’re wrong. it IS disturbing that these clowns got their hands on machines.
but it also feeds a very dangerous narrative.
who r these ppl?

[LymphocyteLover]

13. Yeah, it's always a fine line for discussing this topic

[mopinko]

8. mostly this-

The group also has filed challenges in a handful of states seeking to ban Trump from the ballot in 2024 under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment.

how does that make sense? from a ‘left’ group?

[BumRushDaShow]

9. The article sentence was oddly worded

They support CREW in challenging 45 being on the ballot and have been filing amicus briefs.

Their website - https://freespeechforpeople.org/

Example of the above demands - https://freespeechforpeople.org/free-speech-for-people-files-amicus-brief-in-colorado-supreme-court-demonstrating-why-court-must-decide-trumps-disqualification-under-section-3-of-the-fourteenth-amendment/

[LymphocyteLover]

11. they are supporting the ban from the ballot

[usaf-vet]

14. Trump has spent years trying to convince American voters the elections can be stolen. This is an interesting.....

Last edited Wed Dec 6, 2023, 10:58 PM - Edit history (2)

.... video/audio worth the listen. Suggesting Trump has been involved since 2012 in building a narrative about stolen elections.

Listen to at least the first 8:40 minutes. At this link. https://www.democraticunderground.com/13225034

True? Who knows, but it seems to me it has merit, and maybe Jack Smith will give it legs.

Additional information to this early morning post of mine.

https://www.salon.com/2023/12/06/the-whole-story-of-jan-6-legal-experts-say-jack-smith-filing-hints-at-very-powerful-evidence/

[AmBlue]

19. Let me be clear: This is NOT disinformation.

I cannot find a link to the letter mentioned in this article, but I can unequivocally say this is NOT disinformation. These people are serious experts working to protect the infrastructure of our election systems where there are known vulnerabilities. We cannot close our eyes to this reality and pretend it's not a serious challenge that we face.

These dedicated folks are part of a national network of election systems experts, computer scientists, citizen advocates, and election officials that have been concerned about the security of American elections since the advent of black-box touchscreen voting machines, after the hanging chad election fiasco of 2000 in Florida. I personally collaborated with John Bonifaz and Professor Doug Jones (mentioned in this article) when we successfully lobbied then Governor Charlie Crist and the Florida Legislature to get rid of touchscreen voting systems and move to paper ballots in 2007. This was a concerted effort in Florida that involved the League of Women Voters, NAACP, Common Cause, the Brennan Center for Justice, and Verified Voting, among others. Here's a link to a NY Times article announcing Florida's switch to paper ballots: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/us/02voting.html&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwidp4zdo_yCAxXWRzABHUdzD70QFnoECAwQAg&usg=AOvVaw0CdpNEo0E0jDJi6-qBpln6
Sorry,I am not a subscriber to NYT... maybe someone can help us with an archive link.

Election Verification Network (EVN) is another group I have long been a supporter of and has many of the same experts and advocates: highly renowned academics, computer scientists, Constitutional law scholars, elections experts, elected officials, and citizen advocates who have testified before Congress and lobbied on behalf of the American people for free, fair, trustworthy, transparent, and verifiable elections for many years now.

Please check out EVN's Board of Directors and list of supporters. Their story is, in fact, quite amazing. Read about them and become familiar with their names, because they are, truly, the good guys. Most, if not all, are trustworthy, knowledgeable experts fighting for secure, verifiable elections that are integral to American democracy. Read about EVN here: https://electionverification.org/our-story/

In this age of disinformation, there are indeed sinister forces that want us to lose all faith in our elections and cast doubt on every election for their own cynical purposes. We, as citizens advocating to preserve American democracy and the free elections that sustain it, need to be able to recognize the real experts and advocates working on behalf of all Americans, who are instead urging common sense systems be put in place NOW to secure all future elections. They are true heroes and should be supported and recognized for their good work.

[LymphocyteLover]

3. there's no doubt they will try to do this and I bet they did this in 2020

but didn't succeed

[gab13by13]

5. How do you know they didn't succeed?

There were anomalies in 3 states where exit polling contradicted the actual vote count. These anomalies happened in Florida, Maine, and Kentucky and the common thread was ES&S voting machines.

Now they apparently stole the software for Dominion.

This all could have been stopped early on had DOJ prosecuted the Cyber Ninjas who violated Title 52 of the federal election code.

[LymphocyteLover]

12. I think they probably did! One reason dump was so convinced the election was stolen from him

because he had already stolen (or "stollen&quot it

[Think. Again.]

4. Any and all digital stuff...

...is clearly vulnerable to being messed with, as we see in so many hacking breaches constantly being reported every day.

Wasn't there a situation a couple of years ago where a random voting machine was just stolen out of secured storage? Why would anyone take that risk unless they hoped to use it to figure out how to mess with the company "proprietary" programming?

These machines should only use open-source programming that can be easily checked at any time, by anyone, for any programming code that shouldn't be there.

Luckily, we do vote count audits and other checks on vote tallies, but still, these machines should just not be built on "company secret" programming.

[Lonestarblue]

6. The corrupt Republicans in Georgia who copied the Dominion software have no doubt shared the copy.

Every county using Dominion no doubt has access to those copies. I would hope that Dominion would make changes before the 2024 election to make it difficult to change their programming to favor Republicans. I think the ES&S machines (old Diebold) are a huge problem because they lack any type of paper backup, and the machines can easily be hacked. NBC did a program back in 2019 on voting machines that I didn’t see then but plan to watch. Here’s the link.

https://www.today.com/video/meet-the-company-that-makes-voting-machines-used-across-us-75339845780

I think it may have been Karl Rove or some other corrupt Republican who stated some time ago that only a 3% change in the voting tabulations would make a difference in who wins the election and would not be noticed by voters or officials. That may have been how Diebold delivered Ohio for George Bush in 2004, for which Diebold was fined $50 million dollars but Bush was still president so it was worth it to their CEO.

We cannot trust most Republicans, especially if Trump is the nominee. We need independent reviews of voting machines and votes in the swing states that are mostly run by Republicans.

[bluestarone]

10. Dominion should KNOW to be on top of this!! (i hope)

These bastards will do ANYTHING they can in EVERY rethuglicon state to cause huge troubles. These states will need lots of Democratic eyes watching the process!

[slightlv]

18. The various break ins on the software, the copying of it, the entire backups

taken across states have worried me for some time. Sure, those machines were deplatformed, but that doesn't mean they didn't learn anything from the multitude of lines of code they stole. I don't think you have to be a conspiracy nut to be concerned about this. We've had at least two "companies" that purported to be election auditors basically handed the goods to them... in Arizona and throughout the South. I do worry about the shenanigans that the R's could try to pull.

I'm all for safe, secure electronic voting. I just don't trust the R's, especially this election. We know everything they accuse us of doing, is merely projection for what they're either already doing or planning to do. I'm almost ready to go back to paper ballots, myself. But electronic with paper backup and audits... as long as they can catch anything the R's tried... are okay, I guess. I'm just overly worried about the continuing soft coup going on in this country, and our slow judicial process being up to deal with it in time. Like i said, I don't think you need to be a conspiracy nut to be worried about this. The R's want this country a dictatorship and are willing to do anything to make it so. That's just a fact.

[Novara]

15. I have NEVER trusted electronic voting machines.

We do know that these assholes got their hands on several of them in several states. All the more reason to go back to paper ballots. Hell, maybe we should vote using black marbles and white marbles. Hard to hack those.

I'm only half kidding.

[samnsara]

20. i love my states 100% mail in paper ballots..postage paid even!

so NO excuse to not vote and yet during a recent election of something turnout was 35%

[Bayard]

16. I thought all voting machines in AZ had to be replaced,

Because of the shenanigans going on there with the, "audit." And, at least one county in GA that gave rethugs full access to their voting machines after the election.

Examining irregularities everywhere seems like a good idea, but should have been started at least a couple years ago.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. We had a dark red tiny population county here in PA that voted something like 80% 45, do the same

and they didn't just do it once, but after they were caught and a state judge said STOP, they went back 2 more times to allow "auditors" in to look at the machines. That county used the Dominion machines.

The SOS at the time decertified their machines and told the county they would have to pay for leasing new ones for subsequent (post-2020) elections.

The latest was this -

Supreme Court won’t intervene in Pennsylvania dispute over access to voting equipment after 2020 election

By Ariane de Vogue and Zachary Cohen, CNN
Updated 3:44 PM EDT, Tue September 12, 2023


CNN — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an emergency bid from Republican election officials in a Pennsylvania county to freeze sanctions related to a dispute about voting equipment and the 2020 election. The case involves actions taken by two of three Fulton County, Pennsylvania, Commissioners – Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch – who sought to have Dominion voting equipment examined by a third party after the 2020 election. They claimed they did so to consider whether to continue to use the voting machines.

Multiple outside firms were ultimately given unauthorized access to voting systems in Fulton County after the 2020 election without authorization from the Board of Elections, according to court filings in the special master probe. The third county commissioner only learned that an outside firm had been allowed to inspect the election equipment until after it was done, court filings show.

One of the cyber forensics firms that examined and copied components of Fulton County’s Dominion voting system – Wake TSI – was hired by Defending the Republic, a non-profit founded by former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, according to an invoice from December 2020. Powell has not responded to CNN’s request for comment. None of the third party groups granted access to the voting systems in Fulton County were contracted by the county itself or had the proper accreditation to carry out such an inspection, according to court records.

In July 2021, upon learning of the inspection, the secretary of the commonwealth argued that the inspection itself had compromised the integrity of the equipment by undermining chain of custody requirements and access limitations necessary to prevent tampering. The state secretary issued a directive barring county boards of elections from providing access to third parties seeking to examine state-certified voting systems. The directive provided for the revocation of funding from counties whose machines had been decertified under the directive and stated that Pennsylvania would not reimburse any cost of replacement voting equipment that had to be withdrawn.

(snip)

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/12/politics/supreme-court-pennsylvania-voting-equipment/index.html