Should the GA report on Dominion machine security be public?
Common practice in the computer security field, when a security issue in a product not under your control is found, is to report that issue to the product owner and allow them time to respond and correct the problem before releasing public information about the vulnerability. If the product owner does not take it seriously or refuses the fix the problem promptly, the information can be released publicly.
In the case of election systems, there's the election itself, a hard deadline that limits the time to respond to flaws, and the complicating factor that fixing problems often requires public pressure.
Regardless, the public should know if their election systems are secure or not. The report must be released. Preferably before the next election, and the sooner it is released, the sooner fixes can be made and verified. Given the timing, it may be necessary to wait until after the primaries; but no longer than that. Since it has been over a year since the last large scale election, more than enough time to fix any fixable problems has passed. The people deserve to know.
It's interesting that Raffensperger wants the report released. Does he feel like the redacted information would minimize the security issues, or does he just want to point to his argument to claim he is in favor of election security?
Report on Dominion voting machines vulnerability to hackers
Raffensperger is desperately trying to get on the right side of this issue, because he started off on the wrong one, and quite possibly complicit in covering it up. Nevertheless, the report should be released, because if it's not released, what's the point of having a report?
If it says the voting machines are secure, let's see if and evaluate whether that's accurate. If it says they can be hacked, we'll evaluate that. (Odds are they CAN be; the real question is whether they actually were).
But, regardless of the outcome, audits of the security of our election systems should be public knowledge.
About the paper used in the Maricopa County election
The election was supposed to be conducted with VoteSecure paper, which would not have bleed through problems and would be readily identifiable as the correct paper. There's even a setting in the Dominion machines to check the paper type. But as it turns out, none of the paper was VoteSecure paper. Which would allow all kinds of fake ballots on fake paper to be inserted easily, and would also require premeditation to ensure the correct paper was not used and the machine detection turned off.
In other words, even more evidence of premeditated fraud by someone.
Powell to depose Dominion representative in defamation case
The catch is that she is deposing them as part of her defense against charges of defamation. I wouldn't expect any big revelations here.
Honestly I'm not sure what I think of Powell at this point. Her defense of Flynn was legit and laudatory. I gave her some credibility on the "Kraken" accusations because of that association, but it looks like she has dropped those (perhaps due to the sourcing coming from a known fraudster) and focused instead on accusing Dominion of things (which drew their defamation suit in response). I have no information about whether her Dominion accusations are accurate, but I have a hunch her inside source pushing the more sensational claims was just as much a fraudster as the Kraken guy.
The leaves Dominion as a company with a flawed and insecure product that was used to run many elections where accusations of fraud have been made. What their involvement in that fraud was, if any, remains to be determined.
I wouldn't count Powell out yet, but she has definitely made some missteps. It will be interesting to see what comes out of her defense against the defamation charge. If she actually has anything credible, it should show up eventually.
UPDATE: Perhaps I spoke too soon. The judge sealed the deposition sua sponte (on her own initiative)
Why the election machine vendors all of a sudden want to remove batteries from their election machines is suspect. Personally, I suspect that removing batteries could cause configuration information on those machines to be removed, making it difficult to audit the election. And I can see little other reason to request such a thing.
The third, mechanical, ballot total count should provide a credibility check as to which count is correct, as least as far as physical ballots. The report is where we will find out what's going on with the validity of those ballots, insofar as they can be checked.
The missing pieces: router information, admin credentials for the voting systems, and chain of custody documentation for the ballots.
They wouldn't be fighting so hard to protect those things if there wasn't something important there. What it is we don't know.
DePerno: Three suspect states had anonymous remote election system logins
If you can log in remotely to the election servers, with admin privileges, you can pretty much do anything to change the results without an audit trail, especially if you have the MS SQL access tool installed to bypass the election system itself and directly adjust the database... and recall that tool has already been found on other election systems that displayed strange behavior.
This shows that during the currently ongoing audit, the memory card in the vote counting machine being audited was cleared before running the election audit.
This would likely have the effect of wiping out any modifications performed on that card intended to effect the election. In other words, you could rerun the election and it would function normally because any modifications intended to influence the election would be wiped out.
Does it prove there was anything nefarious? No. But is it intended to prevent future auditors from discovering if there was anything nefarious? I can't think of other serious explanations, but I'm not an expert on how these machines work or exactly what each machine command on the tape means.
But it sure looks like the "auditors" in New Hampshire got caught deleting election records and potentially evidence of a crime.
UPDATE: It's possible the card being cleared was not an actual card used in the election. It could be a copy, or even an entirely new card with fresh programming. So that's one possible explanation.
UPDATE: There's also some date manipulation that seems significant.
The New Hampshire auditors: compromised or merely biased?
As it turns out, all three auditors know each other and have worked together. At least one of them has demonstrated the machines he is supposed to be auditing can be easily hacked. Two of them were appointed to important election-related public office by Democrats (Pelosi and Reid).
None of this is proof of wrongdoing. But. None of the auditors appears to be politically independent. One has previously demonstrated exactly how hackable the exact type of machines at issue here really are, which calls into question any later attempt to give them a clean bill of health.
It appears the public pressure for election audits has become too strong to ignore, and the election fraud defense teams have shifted to allowing controlled audits that can be prevented from finding or disclosing any real problems.
The problem here is that the New Hampshire Constitution says that any citizen is entitled to an audit according to the law. The law doesn't say much about audits. The SecState says she conducted an audit, and that's that. The judge agreed that if the SecState says she did an audit, that's all anyone is entitled to. Even if what the SecState did was more of a recount of the tabulator tapes and did not look at any actual ballots. Even if there were demonstrated problems with the tapes and machines.
The best chance for moving forward seems to be to convince the legislature to authorize their own audit, similar to the one being conducted in Arizona. The examination of the voting machines in this case did produce useful evidence that may help convince the legislature.
No one seems to want to admit deleting election files in Maricopa County
Since deleting those files probably comes with criminal penalties, that's not surprising. But it seems likely someone did delete them before providing the routers to the auditors.
Who and why deleted the files?
There are some suggestions that the audits may have managed to recover the deleted files. From my own experience, this is sometimes (often) possible, depending on the measures taken to recover files and on the measures taken to delete them. However, I haven't seen anything that indicates that has actually happened, just suggestions that it very well could have.
Dominion refuses to comply with subpoena in Marocopa County audit
This is really not something that should be optional. They need -- have a legal requirement -- to provide those passwords and admin access to allow the audit to proceed.
Mind you, until now, Dominion may not be a direct party in the case, meaning they are not legally bound to comply. But that should be a simple matter of bringing this to the judge and saying "Look, they have the admin access to the machines you already ruled we could get, and they won't provide it. Please order them to."
But given what has already been found, it's clear that all of this is just a series of delaying tactics. The election in Maricopa County, AZ was stolen. The cover-up proves it to my satisfaction. Which means it was stolen in Arizona overall. Which is not enough to flip the result to Trump... but proving that would put tremendous pressure on the other states involved in shenanigans to conduct proper audits.
The unusually high adjudication rates appear to be a common factor in regions that had unusual results. Each adjudicated ballot has to be decided by a human, but the process is electronic and subject to interference from hackers. When proper audits have been performed, evidence of intrusions was detected. None of this depends on conspiracy theories about CIA or Dominion involvement, just evidence in the public record.
Everything about the elections, including source code of the software used to run them, should be subject to FOIA regardless of what those contracts say.
Arizona AG files brief supporting legislative subpoena of election machines
There's no justification for refusing this subpoena; the county must, therefore, have something significant to hide. But they don't have to actually win their case, just delay it past January 20th when nothing can be done about their cheating.
Trump considering Sidney Powell for special counsel?
I take no position on whether Sidney Powell should be a special counsel for vote fraud. I think someone needs to be, and if the President has to order voting machines seized as evidence in order to prove it, that needs to happen too. We need to know whether the election system has been corrupted to the degree Powell has alleged whether she is right or not. We cannot simply hope she is wrong, and it costs very little to check.
Arizona legislature calls for special session after subpoena refused
The only reason I can come up with to try to block a state legislative subpoena for this information is that it will find something that would incriminate the local officials who ran the election.
GA election officials trying to block open records requests for election machines
There's some truth to the idea that providing copies of software used and exact versions & patches applied has security implications, but after the election those security implications seem very minimal. At worst, such requests (aside from copies of the software itself, which is probably protected by vendor's copyright, unless the agreements made it available) should be delayed until after the January 5th runoff. After that, there's no real reason that the software versions and patches on the election machines at the time the elections were run should not be made available.
Maricopa County, AZ refuses subpoena for voting machines
There is neither excuse nor justification for this refusal. Clearly the Maricopa County officials know that shenanigans will be exposed if the machines are audited, and they are likely trying to figure out how to cover their tracks even now.
I think selling a military revote in the swing states to the American people would be a big challenge. But seizing the voter machines to demonstrate the fraud would be a smaller and more reasonable step that might convince the public that a big remedy is necessary.
The magnitude of this as already reported is huge.
The timing -- almost exactly aligned with the forensic audit of Dominion voting systems in Antrim country, which is known to use the Solarwinds product -- is also extremely suspicious.
FBI, CISA, and DNI investigating Solarwinds breach
The timing of this investigation, coupled with the delay in the DNI intelligence report on the election, strongly suggests that the forensic audit of the Dominion voting systems in Antrim county found an unexpected backdoor that was used to access and tamper with those voting machines.
Powell files appeals to the Supreme Court from MI and GA
The SC has actually not disposed of the PA case; it rejected an emergency injunction but there is a pending request to hear the case on the normal schedule.
However, the tea leaves are not positive for Powell's cases. The one bright spot is that forensic audits have turned up new evidence suggesting at least some of the Dominion voting machines have been compromised and the election results tampered with. If more such evidence turns up, courts may start to take notice. Legislatures appear to have taken notice already.
While the audits of Dominion voting systems have certainly turned up disturbing and suggestive information, Powell seems entirely too focused on making big allegations with limited circumstantial evidence rather than pushing for the audits of actual voting machines that would reveal how widespread the problem really is.
Biden performed 1.5% better in states using Dominion
We already have one audit that demonstrated conclusively that the machines were tampered with in such a way as to send 70% of all ballots to manual adjudication, and to remove the audit logs concerning the election and adjudication process.
This seems likely to be part of the non-public fallout from the forensic audit of the Dominion Voting Systems hardware in Michigan -- the audit that found the systems were compromised to produce an artificially high error rate, where ballot adjudication can be used to steal the election, and that crucial security and audit logs were missing from the systems, suggesting them were compromised and the logs removed.
I wouldn't be surprised if Barr's departure is also related to this -- either because Barr didn't find it or didn't want to follow up on it.
... as well as other states. At this point, it's impossible to read anything but very negative and bitter flavors in the tea leaves. But it's still at least possible to see a positive result. Just not very likely, so don't go holding your breath.
Were automated test ballots used to commit election fraud?
This is one of those technologies that can have legitimate uses, and can also be abused for improper purposes. One would hope that test ballots would be automatically marked in some way to avoid them being counted in a real election (although that has its own problems, too). Fundamentally it's a choice between testing with valid normal ballots versus testing with special test ballots that might have special code to handle. The right answer is probably to keep stringent protections on the test ballot generator combined with logs of which ballots were generated as tests so they can be removed from any actual results. It doesn't sound like those controls are in place.
Antrim County forensic audit blames Dominion software?
He doesn't actually say what he found, it's under protective order, but he thinks it is enough to flip the state's electors. This will either be completely explosive or a very disappointing dud.
Washington State governor's race now has a pending lawsuit
Another demand for a voting machine audit, too. If any of Sidney Powell's claims have real meat behind them -- by which I mean, there was not just potential for fraud and foreign actors, but actual people using the security holes in the Dominion system to commit actual election rigging -- then there are a LOT of applecarts about to be turned over.
The key thing that remains missing here is evidence that this "controller module" was actually used fraudulently during the election to flip the race for Biden and possibly others. Ballot adjudication of unclear ballots is .. I won't say normal, because I would just toss out ballots unreadable by machine as the machine is or should be an impartial process... so let's say adjudication is expected.
Descriptions I've seen of how Dominion implements the adjudication process appear to me to be ripe for fraud and abuse and a security/audit nightmare. But that, too, is not proof of fraud.
BOMBSHELL: Forensic audit of Dominion voting system available
The high error rate is significant because it would result in sending almost 70% of votes to the adjudication process, where the administrator could decide which candidate would receive the votes.
The missing adjudication logs for 2020 along with the presence of those logs for prior years indicates that the adjudication logs were deliberately removed this year. Deliberately.
The missing logs for 2020 in general are also troubling and indicates someone was deliberately wiping evidence.
And by extension similar systems used in other states, including most of the battleground states at issue. However, without a forensic audit of those systems, we won't know whether they have the same specific problems (missing logs, absurdly high error and adjudication rates) that demonstrate the step for a possibility of fraud to probability of fraud.
We do appear to have proof of fraud in Antrim County, specifically the high error/adjudication rate, the vote swap, and the missing log files.
"Conclusive evidence" is a strong statement. He says it's available on the Wood and Powell websites, which ... doesn't seem like it's anything new yet?
We need more than hypothetical evidence, and that's something we'll only get from a forensic audit.
Massive cyber fraud found in Antrim voting machine audit?
Take with grains of salt because as far as I know this information is still under court ordered seal. Even if true, Dominion machines being connected to the internet isn't evidence of vote fraud even if it is evidence the public has been lied to. (That point, in my opinion, is already established; Dominion machines are absolutely connected to the internet). The "remote adjudication" feature is also established, but does not necessarily demonstrate fraud. The question is who does the adjudication, is it in accordance with the law, and is it done honestly.
Sending ballots to Europe for adjudication is definitely suspicious; shouldn't they be adjudicated by local workers? That part has been suggested by traffic analysis but not yet proven.
If it can be proven that the error rate on dominion machines was set to an excessively high number, thus sending massive numbers of ballots into the adjudication process where administrators can essentially assign them to anyone without an audit trail, that would be about the first half of a smoking gun that we need. The other half would be who was adjudicating those ballots and were they doing so honestly or falsely.
This is worth keeping an eye on, but nothing solid yet.
Video of ways Dominion voting machines can be used to cheat
Basically, administrators can adjudicate ballots in any way they want to, with no audit trail, even scanning blank ballots. So can anyone who remotely compromises the system.
I see no honest reason why these various jurisdictions are so intent on deleting their election data. There must be something they are trying to hide.
It's been 48 hours since the Antrim voting machines were imaged and handed off to investigators. If they found something on those machines, we should know soon.
GA officials can't replicate numbers during recount
There's not really enough information here to know for sure how significant it is. The very lack of information suggests it has some significance, though. If they "couldn't replicate their numbers" and the discrepancy was minor, just a few votes one way or the other, no one would care. If it was a lot more for Biden on the recount, people wouldn't care because the outcome wouldn't change. So they must have gotten a lot more for Trump when they recounted, and they don't want to admit that because they are partisans, or they would be implicated in fraud, or both.
Notice that neither of those responses address the merits of the case. Powell's suits were filed as fast as reasonably possible, and to claim they were nonetheless filed too late is to basically deny all possible relief from the courts to election fraud. Hard evidence too takes time to gather, and is controlled by partisan actors. It may take discovery and court orders to obtain. Further, "You took too long" and "You don't have enough evidence" are very close to inherently contradictory. I suspect these cases will get appealed rapidly.
FBI raided Maricopa County, AZ home over voter data theft
It's possible this guy is just a lone crank. But what use would anyone have for stealing voter data that you could easily buy?
The only explanation that comes to mind is to use that data to somehow mess with the election, and have it not be linked back to you as one of the people who bought the data. Even then I don't really see how this data would help; to commit election fraud you would want to be able to add records. Of course we don't know that, once having broken in, he couldn't add or change records.
I can come up with possible explanations, but we're really waiting to see what the investigators tell us.
Let's not forget that the Dominion voting machines are programmed with USB sticks. And he had a bag of them, which I presume means a lot. And the FBI sure jumped on this guy right quick after the election, despite Barr's later "I ain't seen nothin'" interview. So we're left wondering what the hell is going on in Maricopa County.
Imaging of Dominion machines in Antrim country reportedly progressing
Sources are not really cited for any of the updates beyond that it was expected to happen this morning, but it's interesting rumors.
This audit is probably a make or break thing for the Trump challenge, barring the server seizure from Germany being real. If they can prove these machines were compromised, they can start making much stronger arguments to look at others. If they can't, their credibility takes a hit.
Official explanations for this put the cause of the problems (in this one country) as human error. It might even be accurate in this case. But the importance comes from being able to apply what's on the Dominion machines to the rest of the places using it.
An interesting series of articles from 2016 describing how the weighted race feature in Dominion voting systems (and others) can be used to adjust results.
GA officials threaten grave consequences if they cannot wipe election machines
Memory cards are cheap. There is absolutely no reason not to preserve those used in an election for at least several years so that the data can be examined. the hurry here is entirely unseemly and unnecessary. Just buy new memory cards, allow the machines to be examined and released. There's no need to wipe anything. Further, I believe there is a federal law that requires election data to be preserved even aside from this order.
What seems clear: poll observers and some workers were told to go home; after they left, counting resumed with ballots pulled from underneath a table in what has been described as "suitcases". Some officials claim this was all normal and that the poll watchers being told to go home because counting had stopped was a miscommunication. Others, including the Trump legal team, point to a spike in Biden ballots that registered at the same time.
Weighted percentage voting is a documented feature of the Dominion system. Supposedly it's there for shareholder votes or something. But it's very convenient.
Court grants Powell expedited appeal on injunction order
The pessimist in me says they have already wiped the machines, shredded the envelopes, and otherwise destroyed everything. But we won't know if we don't look.
One possible reason for servers to crash is if you are running untested, unauthorized code on them. Like you would have to do if you were a hacker trying to use them to steal an election.
Occupy Georgia state capital and protest outside GA SecState's house
There is absolutely no reason to wipe the machines now. Image them and preserve the images, and either seek other options for the runoff, or use simple paper ballots counted by hand.
Why is Raffenberger in such a hurry to destroy the evidence?
I'd recommend against protesting at someone's house. But when the police and the courts will not intervene to stop the destruction of evidence, options are limited. And people are really, really angry about this.
The problem with this assertion is that the ballots print and read QR codes. They also print a readable version of the ballot. But if the two do not match, how can the voter tell, assuming they even bother to check?
Now, this would probably be fixable by hand counting the ballots. But I seem to recall not all Georgia counties actually did a hand recount. And many voters probably do not think to check their ballots. That's also far from the only way to cheat with a voting machine.
Also, Powell's suit doesn't rely solely on voting machine issues. It also alleges a number of other issues, each of which has the potential by itself to change the outcome.
Powell should have the chance to present her full case.
The rest of his post makes the good point that Republicans in Georgia were not necessarily confident of a Trump victory. That may be so. But it may also be so that the 2018 elections were tainted by similar issues and the polls were very demoralizing.
Coomer is affiliated with Dominion Voting Systems and the person who allegedly said "Don't worry about the election, Trump's not gonna win. I made fucking sure of that." Here he gives a presentation on how to switch votes. Now, to be fair, he's talking about election adjudicators who are judging ballots the system couldn't read -- but it's easy to manipulate the system to generate a lot of those ballots. And he explains it can be done "remotely", which is a recipe for hackers to get in and abuse the functions. (It also matches up with Dominion having complete remote access to the voting system in Georgia, among other places).
Holy Shit. Military intel guy testifying at Arizona hearing is confirming manipulations in past elections (he named Cruz v Beto and Bevin's race in Ky). He says he observed election day traffic, confirming the systems were on the internet.
Votes can be moved in large batches, whether by administrators or hackers.
Qnatch malware discovered on the servers, which records credentials, enabling remote access with those stolen credentials.
He SAW changes.
He observed traffic going to Frankfurt, one of the sites that has been coming up- in the hammer/scorecard/kraken stuff. The CIA has a known facility in Frankfurt.
It is starting to look like this stuff is real, although details are still lacking.
35,000 fraudulent ballots added to all Democrats in Arizona, as reported by a whistleblower email, and confirmed by observation of an artificial vote spike at the beginning of counting. "Tested and shown to work in judicial retention elections since 2014."
An interview with Patrick Bryne, who as far as I can tell is crazy like a fox. I recognize almost everything he says in the interview, and I don't think it's coming from him... except for the part I emphasized above. If it was supposed to happen for Hillary in 2016 (and yes, Hillary is easily corrupt enough to try that), but someone shut it down, and Bryne knows who that was... And he also mentions that he has a conduit to talk to people in government and give them information (which is probably true, based in his past history)...
Who shut it down in 2016? Why didn't they shut it down in 2020? (And what about 2018 -- yes or no?)
If he is telling the truth ... and has told others... things are going to get a lot more exciting soon, I think.
Patrick Bryne has been an interesting political figure lately. He has linked to FBI for counterintelligence, and whistleblew on their use of him and his connections with a Russian maybe-spy to get introductions to high level Republican politicians and figures in the NRA. Regardless of the individual's guilt or innocence, it's likely she was under FISA surveillance with at least some legitimacy (more than the rest of the Russiagate hoax). That allegation has, oddly, disappeared. Likely because it has at least some grains of truth, and Bryne's public outing of his FBI handler's instructions makes it embarrassing for both sides.
The details of this affidavit will require some technical and security domain knowledge to fully understand. As a developer, but without particular experience in the security field, it puts some meat on the bones of the allegations but remains incomplete, with some allegations relying on the personal knowledge of the witness.
To my mind this comes several weeks too late, but it's a sign that at least one judge is taking things seriously.
Probably should be said that this does NOT mean anyone was actually wiping or resetting machines. It's a preventative. But if the machines turn up wiped after this and they weren't supposed to be...
47 USB cards "missing" and were "found" to have 50K Biden votes
It's not the raw number of those votes necessarily, it's that the 47 "missing" USB sticks have no chain of custody. They could come from anyone. (Remember Philly had a USB key to their voting system and an admin laptop stolen in late October, so someone had the ability to use admin access to create fake Biden ballots). Knowing that it's 50K (at least) for Biden just tells you the magnitude of the problem when considering whether it would change the result of the election.
Here's the lawsuit in PDF form. I've read it. It's clearly written as far as legal proceedings go. The exhibits "will follow", which is disappointing, but they are quoted throughout the document and it's possible to glean some idea of what they will contain.
Notable things: Powell touches on most of the issues we have heard of already for the election in GA. The fake water main break is there. The changes to election procedures by Raffenberger are there. She alleges a number of different sources of fraudulent or illegal ballots and puts numbers to them. Any one win would be enough to overturn the results by itself (with maybe one smaller exception). And, yes, the claims about Dominion are there, though somewhat toned down.
We should expect affidavits from many of the GA poll watchers we have already seen or heard from. In addition, Powell's "secret affiant" from Venezuela is mentioned but not named. She does have a separate named affidavit to the Venezuelan connection, so it's not just one anonymous (to us) person. She also has a "military intel" affiant who claims to have examined the Dominion systems and alleges that they both could be and have been improperly accessed by foreign sources.
This may be the head of the Kraken, but we still haven't seen the tentacles.
Dominion printed ballots deliberately indistinguishable from hand-marked ballots
That's from Eric Coomer, an official with Dominion Voting Systems who allegedly has strong political views favoring Antifa. He said the above during a sales pitch. So let me translate that for you.
His ballot-marking-device is deliberately indistinguishable from a hand-marked ballot. There's no way to tell a printed ballot from a hand-marked one, and this is a deliberate design decision. The claim is it preserves "anonymity" for disabled voters. The reality, in my opinion, is that it makes it difficult to separate printed ballots from hand-filled ones.
This also offers a possible motive for insisting election-day voters in Arizona use Sharpies. The printed ballot marks are designed to resemble Sharpie marks. This would make it that much harder to distinguish printed ballots from hand-filled ones.
It's interesting to speculate about what their motives are for this change. Did their push for election security in 2017 (after Trump's victory, broadly blamed on Russian interference that was not connected to hacked voting machines) provide the impetuous for a switch in voting machine technology to something with known vulnerabilities to abuse?
