NYTimes: "The new tactic of flooding offices with challenges...weaponizes the process. Sorting through the piles of petitions is costly and time-consuming, increasing the chances that overburdened election officials could make mistakes that could disenfranchise voters. And while election officials say they’re confident in their procedures, they worry about the toll on trust in elections. The challenge process, as used by election deniers, has become another platform for spreading doubt about the security of elections.”
Tory leadership contest's online vote is still vulnerable to hackers
"…first time the UK prime minister will be chosen using online votes, and continued worries over hacking raise questions about whether online voting is a safe or wise choice when the stakes are so high….many nations run their own cyberattack teams .....Public distrust in electronic voting could further undermine faith in politics….
"Douglas Jones..says that making a vote public rather than secret is one way to guarantee safety, and that if people want to keep information on who voted for whom secret, then computers aren’t the way to go…. “I cannot see how to guarantee ballot secrecy without some form of physical ballot voted in the privacy of a voting booth.””
Conspiracy Theorists Want to Run America’s Elections. These Are the Candidates Standing in Their Way
TIME “There is a loose brigade of unassuming civil servants on the front lines of the fight to protect America’s election system from the Trump allies out to disrupt it, writes @charlottealter.
They have little in common except a collective purpose: each of them ran this year for an election-oversight position against an opponent who embraces Trump’s “Big Lie.”
A Dominion voting machine ended up on eBay. Here's how much it sold for
Authorities in Michigan are investigating how a missing voting machine from the state wound up for sale on eBay last month for $1,200.
The machine was purchased by a cybersecurity expert in Connecticut who alerted Michigan authorities and is now waiting for law enforcement to pick up the device. CNN determined the machine was dropped off at a Goodwill store in Northern Michigan, before being sold last month on eBay by a man in Ohio.
NYS Board of Elections urged not to certify the ES&S ExpressVote XL due to noncompliance with NYS law
Below is a letter that is in the mail to the New York State Board of Elections.
In it, Citizens for Voting Integrity and others ask the Board of Elections not to certify the ES&S ExpressVote XL as it does not comply with current NYS law.
The Board of Elections must deny certification of a voting machine that would move New York backwards from our current verifiable system of hand-marked paper ballots. Any new or replacement voting machine or system must preserve all the rights and privileges thus far granted by law to New York's voters.
Rensselaer County's Republican elections commissioner arrested by FBI
"The actions of Schofield, 42, surfaced in the federal criminal case involving former Troy Councilwoman Kimberly Ashe-McPherson….she pleaded guilty June 8 to a felony charge in U.S. District Court after admitting she had fraudulently submitted absentee ballots in last year's primary and general elections. ...Schofield was the unidentified board of elections official listed as "Individual-3." According to the document, Schofield had allegedly facilitated helping Ashe-McPherson obtain an absentee ballot through an online portal using the name and date of birth of a voter without "lawful authority.”
‘The US could lose the right to vote within months’: Top official warns on threat to democracy
.. a near-daily torrent of threats, many violent and eerily “descriptive”. “Jena Griswold: "It is really hard to do your job when someone’s telling you over and over how they’re going to hang you" ..earlier this year, Tina Peters, a far-right county clerk in Colorado, was indicted on charges that she directed a breach of voting machines. The episode spurred Griswold to raise the alarm about “insider threats”.”
Suspect petitions were assembled at NY Republican headquarters
""It is clear the Zeldin campaign perpetrated a fraud," Myrie alleged. "Pages of valid signatures were photocopied. Thereafter, the original sheets were paginated, as were the photocopied pages. These sheets were assigned different page numbers in order to create the appearance that the pages contained separate, valid signatures. ... What is unknown and must be investigated by your office is who committed these criminal acts.””
Barcode Voting Machines: The Most Unnecessary Gap in US Election Security
"“Voters can’t read barcodes,” said Alex Halderman, professor of computer science and director of the Center for Computer Security and Society at the University of Michigan. “The problem is that you’re putting a potentially compromised computer in between the voter and the permanent and only record of their ballot.”...“ Will Adler, a senior technologist in election and democracy at the Center for Democracy and Technology,"All of those concerns about someone manipulating the software — to change the election or to even just create chaos and distrust — apply equally, or even more, to people who have had insider access,” he said. “
...At a time in which mistrust in elections has been stoked, the opaqueness of BMDs poses a problem even if the vote counting goes entirely by the book. ...“People who want to delegitimize the results of elections will go to the ballot marking devices and risks and point out that we don’t have a good way to know whether we had a malfunction or not,”
COMMENT: Since the NY Assembly failed to pass a bill banning them, the New York State Board of Elections is in the process of certifying the ES&S Expressvote XL, a voting machine like those raising alarms in this article. If this bothers you, contact the New York State Board of Elections and tell them to deny certification to ES&S Expressvote XL, since voting machines with barcodes violate your right to verify your vote before it is cast. They must not certify this voting machine. Allegra Dengler
Michigan Officials Detail a Brazen Voting Machine Scheme by Trump Supporters
Revelations of possible meddling have set off a political tsunami in a critical battleground state, as the attorney general seeks an independent inquiry into her likely rival on the ballot this fall.
The office of Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, said that Matthew DePerno and other people had persuaded local clerks in three counties to hand over election equipment.Credit...Max Ortiz/Detroit News, via Associated Press
Happy Fourth of July
Times Union Editorial: Protect election integrity. Voters must be sure that new touchscreen voting machines are honest and secure.
Rebutting Raffensperger's 'Recount' Remarks, Calling Out His Coffee County 'Cover-Up': 'BradCast' 6/22/2022
BradBlog. “... we're joined today by MARILYN MARKS of the non-partisan, nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance for a bit of a rebuttal to Raffensperger and Sterling's testimony before the House J6 panel, and an update to a stunning and troubling story of corruption we initially reported here last month, which could have very serious ramifications for elections in both 2022 and 2024…."We have found nothing that would suggest that Biden should not have been declared the winner. However, there are massive problems with the audit, the recount, and probably the original count, as well," Marks describes.”
Trump's false election claims made it tougher to talk about election security
WAPO: “There are real deficiencies of security in our systems that can and need to be improved, but in many ways, the ‘big lie’ has tainted discussions or efforts,” Susan Greenhalgh, senior adviser on election security for the group Free Speech For People, told me. “There is fear any election security improvements could be twisted to validate the incredibly bogus claims from the Trump campaign.”
Lobbyists killed a bill to protect elections with an assist from the NAACP
Times Union: SUMMARY: "New York elections could soon be at risk of getting hacked, after lobbyists, the NAACP and the Assembly elections committee chair teamed up to kill a bill banning certain voting machines.
After passing the Senate on May 31, the bill, sponsored by state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, D-Brooklyn, and Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Westchester, seemed like a solid bet for passage in the Assembly, since it was sponsored by nearly half of the Assembly’s Democrats, as well as several Republicans.
How Lobbyists Killed a Bill to Protect New York Elections, With An Assist from the NAACP
Cyber agency: Voting software vulnerable in some states
Finally! Top U.S. Cybersecurity Agency Issues Warning About Touchscreen Voting Dangers” …"The vulnerabilities, according to CISA, could allow manipulation of results in a way that would not necessarily be discovered by most security provisions employed by most jurisdictions which use these terrible types of voting systems. Halderman told AP that he believes it is not only the systems made by Dominion that are vulnerable. Similar touchscreen systems made by ES&S, the nation's largest vendor, are used in many more states across the country, or by Smartmatic, whose touchscreen BMDs are now forced on voters at the polling place here in Los Angeles County, the nation's largest single voting jurisdiction. They all have many of the same design flaws, such as the use of barcodes/QRCodes to tally ballots printed out by the systems, ignoring the human-readable selections printed on the same ballot paper that may or may not have been correctly verified by the voter.”
The Voting News for 06/03/2022
New York on brink of major voting rights act
Good news; the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York passed at the last minute.
Bad news: the bill to preserve our hand-marked paper ballots by banning hybrid voting machines did not pass. A1115. Voters will not know if their ballots are counted as cast in counties that purchase these machines. Counties like Westchester have already purchased them and there are now no plans to retire them. These machines undermine the integrity of any audit to verify the machines count.
Security fears persist about New York’s potential use of electronic voting machines
Good-government groups and election security experts are sounding the alarm bells about new electronic voting machines that may soon come to New York. The state Board of Elections as early as this summer may approve touch-screen electronic voting machines that have come under scrutiny in other states. In a new letter to state leaders, election security experts from around the country as well as organizations that advocate for fair elections made the case for lawmakers to approve legislation that would ban the machines before the end of this year’s legislative session on June 2.