My letter to Delaware's Election Commissioner re: DE's alarming decision to buy the ExpressVote XL, which will enable hackers to circumvent manual audits & manual recounts by altering votes only when voters choose the direct deposit ("freedom to cheat") feature. @Delaware_gov 1/
As explained by UCB Professor @philipbstark (who invented Risk Limiting Audits aka "RLAs"), even an RLA would be unable to detect this type of cheating. tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH… 2/
@philipbstark alerted computer science professor and election expert Andrew Appel of this serious issue, prompting Appel to write this article titled: "Serious design flaw in ES&S ExpressVote touchscreen: 'permission to cheat.'" freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/09/14/ser… 3/
Lest you think "paper ballots" are the answer, election officials & vendors call these things "paper ballot systems"! But because these"paper ballots" are marked by a computer, rather than by hand, they can be gamed as described above. 4/
Delaware's Election Commissioner, Elanie Manlove, is also on the Election Assistance Commission, which certifies voting machines. 5/ eac.gov/testing/staff-…
I hope she can be convinced of the need for #handmarked#paperballots instead of the touchscreen barcode ballot markers that she recently decided to buy. 6/
Study shows that people of all political persuasions are willing to modify their beliefs based on corrective info from reliable sources, but “subjects ‘re-believed’ the false info when retested a week later.” 1/ news.northeastern.edu/2018/06/18/tir…
2/ The author of the article says It may help to warn people in advance that they are likely to forget the correction bc “this helps them mentally tag the bogus information as false.”
3/ It’s also “important that the corrective information be repeated as frequently, and with even greater clarity, than the myth.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but elections have been electronically suspect starting long before the Trump/Russia scandal. This article is lulling folks into a false sense of security, which is dangerous. Domestic hackers & insiders were always an equal threat. 1/
I agree, tho not enuf time (and 0 political will) to do this in Nov. Wish it were different. For now I hope to stop states from doubling up on electronics w/ touchscreen ballot markers. Using electronics to count votes is bad enuf. Having them mark our ballots too is nuts. 1/
Nuts except for those who are unable to hand mark their ballots. Once you have hand marked paper ballots they can be either scanned or hand counted (my preference) or both. 2/
Any time u put a machine between the voter and the paper record of voter intent there is an opportunity for programming mischief. Here is just the latest example.: 3/
I’m hoping some of the cyber experts who signed the letter about the risks of using cellular modems to transfer election results can answer this question. Thx! @philipbstark@SEGreenhalgh@rad_atl@jhalderm
Seeing as no one has answered yet, I will say that even if the cellular modems CAN be configured to bypass the internet, we should not have to blindly trust that vendors or whoever else is hired to set them up will do that.
Kathy Rogers, the face & voice of @ESSVote, which has installed CELLULAR MODEMS in tabulators in WI & FL, is cozying up to @DHSgov which refuses to advise states to remove the modems despite a letter from 30 cyber experts & EI groups stating it should do so. #CorruptElections 1/
The notion that cellular modems affect only “unofficial” results is bogus bc, among other reasons, in certain jurisdictions, unofficial results become the official results once added to absentees & provisionals—sometimes w/o ever comparing them to the precinct results tapes! 1/
And Wisconsin doesn’t even require that counties publicly post the results tapes so that the public itself can make this comparison! (I don’t know about Florida, Michigan, & Illinois.) 2/
Thus, we must simply trust that someone trustworthy is conducting this due diligence. In Johnson County, Kansas, the County acknowledged that it does NOT conduct this basic due diligence. 3/