Coronavirus and 2020 Elections: What Happens to Voting in an Outbreak

Concerns are rising about the impact of coronavirus on elections, but New York can eliminate one source of contagion to reduce the risk:

BAN TOUCHSCREEN VOTING MACHINES IN NEW YORK A8597 (Paulin)/ S6733 (Myrie)

Sign the Common Cause New York petition to oppose the Certification of the Broken ExpressVote XL Voting System!

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/oppose-the-certification-of-the-broken-expressvote-xl-voting-system

https://citizensvotingny.org/take-action

NYTimes: Coronavirus and 2020 Elections: What Happens to Voting in an Outbreak "Edmund Michalowski, the deputy clerk for elections in Cook County, Ill.,..added that officials have also been looking at effective disinfectants to wipe down touch screens between each vote.”

Touchscreens: The Mosquito of the Digital Age "The widespread and rapidly growing automation and digitization of our world has led to the installation of billions of touchscreens, both in our personal possession and in public use, such as at hospitals, airports, schools, restaurants, public transit, banks and government offices."

Germs at the Airport "According to our research, the average self check-in screen contained 253,857 CFU – over 13 times more than the average CFU of an airport water fountain button. One check-in screen recorded over 1 million CFU. In comparison, an average of only 172 CFU are found on toilet seats."

The fight to vote: Super Tuesday California and Texas voters faced hours-long lines on Super Tuesday

Creating long lines has long been an effective form of voter suppression. The Republicans use it to their advantage. Democratic primary contests are also impacted, with students or other groups targeted in order to shore up favored candidates at the expense of others. Sophisticated outside interests, such as Russia, also have an interest in creating chaos and discord, as well as influencing outcomes. What will it take to reclaim our elections?

Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump

Trump shot the messenger yet again, firing a senior US intelligence official for releasing a report saying that Russia is interfering in elections to help Trump.

Meanwhile, Brad Friedman writes “... there are reasons to be concerned about the integrity of several upcoming primary elections, not to mention this November's critical general election. Saturday's crucial South Carolina primary will require all state voters to use brand-new, 100% unverifiable touchscreens made by a company with a long history of election failures. The March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, just three days later, will see voters in California, Texas, and North Carolina, among other states, forced to use new, similarly unverifiable touchscreen voting systems for the first time.”

“A Complete disaster’: Fears grow over potential Nevada caucus malfunction

New York has big problems of its own. Aside from the vulnerability of e-pollbooks, there is the possibility of certification of the ESS Expressvote XL in time for adoption of this new hackable technology to be used in New York in November.

The Iowa disaster makes it clear that we should stick to doing things the old fashioned way

Washington Post: Editorials: The Iowa disaster makes it clear that we should stick to doing things the old fashioned way | The Washington Post
It's 2020. Should Americans really still be voting with pen and paper? The answer, amplified by this week’s meltdown in Iowa, is a resounding “yes.”

Editorials: Iowa’s message for the other states: Be ready for everything to go wrong | Lawrence Norden/The Washington Post

State senator calls for public hearing on new voting machines

"Members of the good-government organization Common Cause New York have been raising alarms about the technology for months, arguing that certifying the machines would "risk jeopardizing [New York] elections.”  “The ExpressVote XL is a hackable voting machine that, if certified, will compromise the safety and security of our elections," said Sarah Goff, the deputy director of Common Cause NY. "We’re glad to see the Legislature commit to public hearings. Next, the NYSBOE must reject the machine.””

The Only Safe Election Is a Low-Tech Election

Kevin Roose: "After Monday’s Iowa caucus debacle, I’ve decided that Americans should vote by etching our preferred candidate’s name into a stone tablet with a hammer and chisel. "Or maybe by dropping pebbles into a series of urns, as the ancient Greeks did. ".. every piece of technology involved in the voting process is a possible point of failure….Using a proprietary app to report vote totals is the kind of thing that sounds simple on a start-up’s whiteboard but utterly falls apart in a chaotic real-world environment, where connections drop, phones malfunction and poorly tested apps strain under a surge of traffic. Add an army of frenzied poll workers, impatient voters and twitchy news media, and you might as well have asked the caucus workers to whip up their own JavaScript.”

Fwd: Cyber attacks and electronic voting errors threaten 2020 outcome experts warn

"Potential electronic voting equipment failures and cyber attacks from Russia and other countries pose persistent threats to the 2020 elections, election security analysts and key Democrats warn....“Sen. Warner’s concerns were underscored in November when seven top agency officials, including the heads of the FBI and CIA, issued a joint statement predicting Russia, and other countries intend to meddle in the 2020 elections via cyber attacks or social media. ...Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions,” the joint statement said....A Senate intelligence committee report in mid-2019 concluded that Kremlin hackers manipulated election systems in all 50 states, and succeeded in breaching systems in two Florida counties and another state
“...the recent Brennan report cited growing usage of e-poll books as one of several potential trouble spots for the 2020 elections, and suggested that more advance planning is warranted to ensure safe elections in November. The study estimates 41 states will be using e-poll books next November.

Hackers Are Coming for the 2020 Election - and We're Not Ready

"Four years ago, for an embarrassingly modest price,...  Russian-based hackers tested election websites in all 50 states for weak spots, like burglars casing a would-be target. “The Russians were testing whether our windows were open, rattling our doors to see whether they were locked, and found the windows and doors wide open,” says Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. ...
“...Are we prepared going into the 2020 election?... To use Sen. Warner’s analogy, the windows and doors are no longer wide open, but the burglars are more sophisticated, and there are a lot more of them than there were four years ago. "Four years later, the Russians are more crafty than ever. According to recent reports, they’re now using encrypted communications and recently hacked the Ukrainian natural-gas company at the center of the Trump impeachment scandal to potentially find damaging material about the Biden family. Other foreign nations, including Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and China, are getting in on the act. They’ll be joined, analysts say, by domestic actors — American consultants and candidates and click merchants borrowing and adapting Russia’s tactics to influence an election or make a quick buck.""Nearly every expert agrees on this: The worst-case scenario, the one we need to prepare for, is a situation that causes Americans to question the bedrock of our democracy — free and fair elections. If such a catastrophe occurred and the integrity of a national election came into doubt, Michael Daniel, the former cybersecurity coordinator in the Obama White House who now runs the Cyber Threat Alliance, isn’t sure the country would ever be the same. “How do we deal with that?” he asks. “How do we recover from that?”

Cybersecurity 202: Voting machines vulnerable to hacking

These voting machines are coming to New York unless we act. 

Contact the governor :

https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form

Dear Governor Cuomo:  Do not approve any BMD voting machines for New York.  They are vulnerable to hacking.  Stay with our current system of hand marked paper ballots for those who are able, with separate scanners to protect our vote count.

Expensive, Glitchy Voting Machines Expose 2020 Hacking Risks -Paper ballots may be safer and cheaper, but local officials swoon at digital equipment.

Thanks to several Westchester County legislators (Borgia, Shimsky, Parker, Maher, others) and NYS Board of Elections Commissioner Doug Kellner, and thanks to the efforts by many getting this email, New York has not yet certified the ESS ExpressVote XL, despite the strong desire of the NYC Board of Elections to buy it. Wise decision!

The next battle is to decertify the Dominion ICE, a similar machine, which has been purchased by many counties in New York, including 30 in Westchester.

Election Security Day of Action

Election Security Day of Action

“THEY’RE DOING IT AS WE SIT HERE.” That was Robert Mueller’s one forceful statement to Congress about election interference. Our voting infrastructure – touchscreen voting machines, ballot-marking devices, scanners, e-pollbooks - ALL computerized voting systems - can be been hacked.* Our efforts toward fair elections will be undermined if we have no way to catch and reverse the hacking that election-security experts are warning is already under way for the 2020 elections.

Election interference is coming in the 2020 election whether Trump asks for it or not


Cybersecurity and Democracy Collide: Locking Down Elections Governing

"When asked at a congressional hearing if Russia would attack U.S. election systems again in 2020, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was unequivocal: “It wasn’t a single attempt,” he said. “They’re doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it during the next campaign.” “

Foreign interference is coming in the 2020 election whether Trump asks for it or not MinnPost

"Here’s one possibility: Several countries, each with a lot at stake and all using Russia’s 2016 hacking and disinformation playbook, line up on opposite sides of the election. North Korea and Saudi Arabia, for instance, might trying to help Trump get re-elected while Iran tries to help his opponent.”

Iranian Hackers Target Trump Campaign as Threats to 2020 Mount New York Times

"In addition to Iran, hackers from Russia and North Korea have started targeting organizations that work closely with presidential candidates, according to security researchers and intelligence officials. “We’ve already seen attacks on several campaigns and believe the volume and intensity of these attacks will only increase as the election cycle advances toward Election Day,”

Iranian attacks expose vulnerability of campaign email accounts The Hill

"“It’s a significant threat, and it’s a threat from lots of different groups, foreign and domestic, it’s relatively unsophisticated, so it doesn’t take a lot to be successful,” Orlando told The Hill on Monday."

Why over 130,000 new voting machines could lead to more distrust in U.S. elections Salon

“...BMDs have serious critics at the starting and finish lines of voting. Some counter that this system replaces indisputable human acts (hand-marking ballots) and judgments (post-voting reviews) that build public trust, but contend that BMD counting software cannot be shielded from manipulation by bad actors. The newest auditing tools won’t catch such hacking if it occurs, they say."

Brennan Center: Election Security Lessons from DEFCON 27

“DefCon 26 “Young DEFCON attendees were given the opportunity to hack mockups of secretary of state election results websites for the thirteen Presidential Battleground States. In less than 10 minutes, an 11-year old in the competition hacked into a mockup of Florida’s election results website, changing its reported vote totals. The attack the children were trained to use on the sites (SQL injection) is the same attack the Senate Intelligence Committee warned was used in a majority of Russian cyber attacks on election websites in 2016."

Washington Post: Hackers were told to break into U.S. voting machines. They didn’t have much trouble.

Washington Post: "“Election officials across the country as we speak are buying election systems that will be out of date the moment they open the box,” Wyden said in the Voting Village’s keynote speech. “It’s the election security equivalent of putting our military out there to go up against superpowers with a peashooter.”

“...The first primary votes of the 2020 election will be cast in the Iowa caucuses in just a few months, but it’s impossible to patch the gaping security holes in U.S. election security by then, or even by Election Day, Hursti said.”…

"Hours after the Voting Village opened, it was packed with hackers sporting T-shirts with slogans such as, “If I’m not on the government watchlist, someone isn’t doing their job” and “Come to the Dork side" — all eager to test their skills as an act of civic service. By the end of the weekend, they would uncover a litany of new vulnerabilities in the voting equipment, ranging from gallingly obvious passwords to hardware issues and exposure to remote attacks."

PA Dept. of State admits ExpressVote XL problems, risks chaos in Philly elections

Protect Our Vote Phllly is fighting the same voting machine certified by the New York State Board of Elections, which is now in use in some counties in New York. NYS Board of Elections also admitted to security problems and gave unworkable “corrective actions” to protect the vote, such as to place a foam block inside the machine after every use of the printer.

“The Department of State admitted it would violate PA election law if used as designed.”

New York City Board of Elections wants to buy these machines. There’s a long history of close relationships between the NYC BOE and ESS. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1134186930042621953.html

Jennie Cohn writes about @PreetBahara's criminal probe of ES&S's contract with New York City in 2010, and the indictment of ES&S's New York lobbyist. https://nypost.com/2010/02/11/machine-politics/

More articles on the situation in PA can be found here: https://thevotingnews.com/tag/expressvote-xl/

Renaldo Pearson: Walk with me in D.C. Democracy 911

Renaldo Pearson: " I have a simple message: Our political system is in a state of emergency, and the American people demand action from our nation's leaders.”

Take 11 minutes-go to this page https://www.democracy911.us and watch the video about why Renaldo is marching 600 miles for Democracy. The inspiring video is at the bottom of the page. “1. Protect Our Right to Vote”

He ends with a quote from Maimonides “the world is equally balanced: half good and half evil..... a single good deed will tip the scales for the entire world, to the side of good. We’re calling 911 on our democracy. Will you join the call?”

https://www.democracy911.us

Election Security Inclusion in H.R. 1 “For the People Act"

The House just passed the huge election reform “For the People Act", HR 1, with all Dems voting for, all Reps voting against. It is unlikely to get anyplace in its current form in the Republican-controlled Senate, but in light of the threat of foreign interference the Senate must enact the election security provisions.
Rep Thompson: "With passage of H.R. 1, we will be able to provide the support states need to protect the integrity of our elections against foreign interference, ensure confidence in election results by implementing risk-limiting audits, and trust that election infrastructure vendors are meeting appropriate security requirements.”