Michigan, ES&S and the Voting Machines that couldn’t count!!
Why are States Buying and Using Machines that don’t pass testing?
It is infuriating!!
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All along there have been problems with electronic voting. Again and again election officials and observers have spoken up, only to be ignored.
In 2008 an election official in Oakland County Michigan noticed something alarming.with ES&S optical scan machines. Here is the story.
Optical-scan machines made by Election Systems & Software failed recent pre-election tests in a Michigan county, producing different tallies for the same ballots every time. wired.com/2008/11/michig…
Different Tallies for the same ballots every time!! Not reproducible errors. Different Tallies each time. This is an important differentiation. Different errors and you have a real significant issue.
Here is the letter from the Oakland County Clerk to the EAC, requesting urgent assistance with this matter. wired.com/images_blogs/t…
Eight percent of our communities reported inconsistent vote totals during their logic and accuracy testing. The same ballots, run through the same machines, yielded different results each time.
Conflicting vote totals have reportedly surfaced in other areas of Michigan.
On Election day, will the record number of ballots going through the tabulators leave even more residue, affecting machines that tested just fine initially? Could this skew vote totals?
My understanding is that the problem could occur and election workers would have no inkling that ballots are being misread.
Local clerks are prohibited from performing any maintenance/cleaning on the machines as it voids the warranties.
ES&S has not performed any preventative maintenance since the machines were delivered three years ago.
20 Years with these Electronic Machines and all are talking about is counting. Every other industry in the world has mastered the complexities of adding one plus one.
How long would Banks use ATM'S that handed out the wrong amount of money?
This is crazy.
These States are using overly complex machines. In many cases machines that the poll workers have no idea ho to handle when things go wrong. Machines that prohibit the States from looking into them because of agreements the States sign against their best interest.
Billions of dollars spent. Long term contracts. Machines that are not examinable. Companies that don’t care.
And then we wind up where we are.
Magic Boxes. Doing Magic things. All the time preventing us from knowing what is happening.
This is our Election Infrastructure.
But don’t say anything. Everything is fine.
Interesting side note. Michigan was so upset that they purchased these crappy machines that last year when the contract came up guess which company they went with. Bingo!! ES&S.
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So Russia has reportedly moved on from Hacking our Election Infrastructure. Moving on to other things. Don’t believe it. They are everywhere in our Election System. They know the importance of the Midterms.
Parts of an operation linked to Russian military intelligence targeting the US Senate and conservative think tanks were thwarted last week. The domains were associated with the Russian government and known as Strontium, or alternatively Fancy Bear or APT28
"Hackers could have used the domains to send emails to Senate staffers or people working for the Hudson Institute or the International Republican Institute in an attempt to trick them into handing over information, like their passwords."
#unhackthevote
Georgia to close 75% of Black Counties Precincts!! Precincts that were all open during the Primaries. They know they have a problem. Even with the Election machines that give suspect results they know they need more help.
If this stands we need to start a major effort to provide transportation in this county. We will need drivers, volunteers and people to help distribute notices and spread the word.
This is also what we should be doing in any heavily Gerrymandered area where there is a difficulty with people traveling the long distance to their polling places.
#unhackthevote
Remote Access Software used by ES&S Voting. They finally tell the truth. At least some of it. Thank you to @KimZetter for pursuing her initial story from February. I am afraid we are missing the bigger point here.
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States have given over their Election Systems to a myriad of Private Companies. The States in many cases have absolutely no idea what is happening with their Elections.
Ask yourself why did the States notified over a year after the 2016 Election not know that they were being targeted by Russia? How is that possible? What does that mean for the possibility of having a free and fair Election?
#unhackthevote
Maryland Voter Registration System runs on Russian Owned Software! The biggest problem here is that they never knew it. How is that possible? The States have no idea who is behind the companies they give the Elections over to.
We are going to be dropping a ton of research on exactly this. Why do States willfully do this. Would a state actually know if something went bad ? Let's talk more about Spearphishing.
Every company that touches a States Voting system introduces a hundred more employees that can get hacked. Companies rely on these contracts. They aren't going to disclose what happened. Just look at VR Systems.
What you weren’t taught in school about how your Gov’t works.
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Who appoints our Supreme Court? The President?
Or a Catholic fundamentalist who controls a network of right-wing groups funded by dark money?
A few days ago our colleague @AltDIA made an interesting discovery. An apparent botnet of Twitter accounts tweeting identical messages: "As a Hoosier, I'm calling on @SenDonnelly to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court."