#election security

There’s evidence of Trump cheating and interfering with the election.

Possible Russian interference.

Mail-in ballots are not being counted or “recognized” in multiple (notably swing) states.

30+ bomb threats were called in and shut down polling stations on Election Day.

20+ million votes are still unaccounted for, and that’s just to have the same voter turnout as 2020.

There was record voter turnout and new/first-time voter registration this year. We definitely should be well over the turnout in 2020.

U.S. citizens are using this site to demand, not only a recount, but a complete investigation into election fraud and interference for the reasons stated above:

Here is what I submitted as an example:

An investigation for election interference and fraud is required. We desperately need a recount or even a revote. The American people deserve the right to a free and fair election. There has been evidence unveiled of Trump cheating and committing election fraud which is illegal. There is some evidence of possible Russian interference. At least 30+ bomb threats were called in to polling places. Multiple, notably swing states, have ballots unaccounted for and voting machines not registering votes. Ballots and ballot boxes were tampered with and burned. Over 20 million votes that we know of are unaccounted for. With record turnout and new voter registration this year, there should be no possibility that there are less votes than even in the 2020 election.

Sources (working on finding more links but if anyone wants to add info, it’s appreciated):

FBI addressing Russian interference and bomb threats:

Emails released by Rachael Bellis (private account, can’t share original tweet) confirming Trump committing election fraud:

Pennsylvania's Centre County officials say they are working with their ballot scanner vendor to figure out why the county's mail-in ballot data is "not being recognized when uploaded to the elections software:”

Wisconsin recount:

[ID:

Multiple screenshots and images.

The first is a screenshot with a link and information for contacting the White House directly regarding election fraud. The instructions include choosing to leave a comment to President Joe Biden directly and to select election security as the reason.

The screenshot then instructs people to include any or all of the following information in a paragraph as a comment to the president:

32 fake bomb threats were called into Democratic leaning poll places, rendering polling places closed for at least an hour.

A lot of people reporting their ballots were not counted for various reasons.

This all occurred in swing states.

This is too coincidental that these things happen and swing in his favor after months of hinting at foul play.

Directly state that an investigation for tampering, interference, fraud is required, not just a recount.

The second image is from the FBI Twitter account that reads:

The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains. None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far. https://t.co/j3YfajVK1m — FBI (@FBI) November 5, 2024

The next four Gmail screenshots of an email sent to Rachael Bellis from Chris T. Spackman that read together as follows:

Dear BELLIS, RACHAEL E., The Dauphin County Board of Elections received a challenge to your absentee ballot you applied for in the November 5, 2024 General Election. The challenge argues that a provision of the Pennsylvania Election Code takes precedence over the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which requires states and counties to permit U.S. citizens who move overseas to vote by absentee ballot for federal offices based on their last U.S. residential address.

The full text of the challenge that was filed appears below this email.

You may respond to the challenge in any of the following ways:

1. Call the Bureau of Registration and Election at (717) 780-6360;

2. Email a statement to the Bureau at Election [email protected]. Any statement you submit regarding the period during which you lived in Dauphin County, any family or connections that you still have here, and why you are now residing abroad would be read into the record.

3. Appear in person at a Board of Elections hearing scheduled for Friday, November 8 at a time to be determined in the Commissioners Public Hearing Room, 4th floor of Dauphin County Administration Building, 2 S 20d St, Harrisburg, PA 17111. The meeting is also likely to be livestreamed on Facebook on the Dauphin County channel.

Sincerely,

Christopher T Spackman

TEXT OF CHALLENGE BEGINS

Dear Dauphin County Board of Elections,

I am submitting this challenge to an absentee ballot application pursuant to 25 Pa. Stat.

3146.8(f).

25 Pa. Stat. 3146.8(f) Any person challenging an application for an absentee ballot, an absentee ballot, an application for a mail-in ballot or a mail-in ballot for any of the reasons provided in this act shall deposit the sum of ten dollars ($10.00) in cash with the county board, which sum shall only be refunded if the challenge is sustained or if the challenge is withdrawn within five (5) days after the primary or election. If the challenge is dismissed by any lawful order then the deposit shall be forfeited. The county board shall deposit all deposit money in the general fund of the…

The rest of the forwarded email is cut off.

The last image is a screenshot of the official statement from the Centre County, Pennsylvania Board of Commissioners released on November 6, 2024 that states:

Centre County Working with Ballot Scanner Vendor to Export Election Results.

(Bellefonte, PA) -Centre County Elections Office is working continuously to provide mail-in ballot data in order to post unofficial results.

To this point, all ballots have been scanned, including all mail-in ballots.

Centre County's Election team and IT team have identified that the data are successfully being exported from the mail-in ballot scanners, but that the data is not being recognized when uploaded to the elections software.

Centre County's Administrator, John Franek, Jr. stated, "We have not stopped working, and we will continue to work until unofficial results are posted and reported to the Pennsylvania Department of State."

As a next step, Centre County has begun working with the equipment vendor to adjust configurations to make the two systems-the mail-in ballot scanner and the elections software where data are uploaded -compatible with one another.

We will provide updates as we make progress.

Angelenos! I’ll be at the Los Angeles Festival of Books TOMORROW (Apr 19) for a panel called “Nature or Nurture: How Humans and AI Are Changing Each Other” with Adam Becker, Joanne McNeil, and Lucas Cantor Santiago.

Nearly 25 years ago, in the aftermath of Bush v Gore, I got involved in a bunch of ugly tech policy fights over voting machines. The hanging chad debacle in Florida prompted Congress to appropriate funds for states to purchase new touchscreen voting machines based on a robust, open standard. The problem was, those machines didn't exist.

The voting machine industry in those days was already very consolidated (it's far more consolidated today). They went shopping for a standards body that would publish a spec for a "standard" voting machine that could soak up those federal dollars in time for the 2004 election. The only taker was the IEEE, who unwisely offered to serve as host for this impossible rush job.

Once the voting machine reps were around a table at IEEE – largely sheltered from antitrust scrutiny thanks to the broad latitude enjoyed by firms engaged in standardization, which is otherwise uncomfortably close to collusion – they admitted what everyone already knew: there was zero chance they were going to develop a new standard in time for the election.

Instead, they decided they were going to publish a "descriptive standard." Rather than designing a new standard, they'd write down the specs of their own products – the same products that were considered so defective they needed to be replaced before the election – and call that the standard.

That was my first encounter with this issue as an activist. I had just started at EFF and a lot of our supporters were IEEE members, who were appalled to see their professional association being used to launder this incredibly politically salient, technically incoherent scam. We got a ton of IEEE members to write to the board, who shut down the standards committee and kicked the voting machine companies to the curb.

The voting machine companies weren't done, though. Diebold – one of the leaders in the cartel – knew that its voting machines were defective. They'd crash, lose their vote-counts and malfunction in other ways that were equally damaging to election integrity.

This was an alarming piece of news, but perhaps just as alarming is the way it came to light. A Diebold employee described this situation in a memo that was subsequently hacked and dumped by parties unknown. That memo, along with the accompanying tranche of extremely alarming revelations about Diebold's voting machine division, was the subject of one of the first mass-censorship copyright campaigns in internet history.

Diebold didn't dispute the veracity of these damning revelations: rather, it claimed that since the memos detailing its gross democracy-endangering misconduct had been prepared by an employee, that they were therefore works-made-for-hire whose copyright was held by Diebold, and thus anyone who reproduced the memo was infringing on the company's copyright.

Under Section 512 of the then-new Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Diebold was empowered to send "takedown notices" to the web hosting providers whose users had posted the memos, and if the web hosts didn't remove the content "expeditiously," they would be jointly liable for any eventual copyright damages, which are statutorily set at $150,000 per infringement.

Every web host folded. No one wanted to take the risk of tens of millions of dollars in statutory damages.

(Incidentally: anyone who tells you that "online safety" requires us to make online platforms liable for their users' speech needs to explain how this wouldn't empower every crooked company whose dirty laundry had ended up online wouldn't just do what Diebold did. It's not technically insanity to do the same thing over again in expectation of a different outcome, but it is awfully stupid and reckless.)

This is the phrase Mark Warner kept using in our briefing this morning.

We have to make the claims seem ridiculous NOW so he can’t use them after the fact.

We need to be on offense and get ahead of his messaging before he even starts spreading it.

Last night we got a taste of that messaging.

His whole goal is to get people to distrust voting. Whether he can convince them through foreign interference claims or domestic interference claims, he’ll try it all

So here are some things to note.

First, the only presidential election he’s claiming was stolen was the one HE was in charge of. It was his people who were in charge of making that a safe, free and fair election, and actually, thanks to Russian interference in 2016, it was one of the safest.

During Trump’s first term, Mark Warner co-led the Russia Investigation along with Republican Richard Burr. The findings from that investigation strengthened our elections. All these tools that were created under Trump then, he is trying to dismantle now.

That is the most important point. He did all this. This was all 100% with his supervision.

Second, the job of the Election Assistance Commission, which no longer has a quorum or any members for that matter, was to focus on election security.

One way they did this was through yearly hackathons through a program called Voting Village. Hackers would hack into our voting machines so that we could find every possible loophole and patch it before the election took place.

With the empty EAC, those are no longer happening. So Trump might say he cares about election security, but he’s taking away the very tools that keep elections secure in the first place.

And this isn’t news, we know he doesn’t actually care about election security. He wants elections less secure not more.

But he’s warped the brains of his followers so they don’t see it. It’s on us to show them.

And that’s easier than you think. This argument is pretty powerful no matter who you voted for. This isn’t about his policies. This is purely about safe and secure elections. Most people, when they hear it in these terms, don’t want Trump’s or foreign interference, even if they voted for him.

But most people reading this essay, or that will talk to people who read it, know that. We know Trump is corrupt, we know he is trying to make elections less secure, this isn’t a useful argument for us.

So, what’s the prebuttal for our communities?

We must vote.

Not voting helps Trump just as much as falling for his election security lie. As Senator Warner said today “if you want to follow his expectations and do his bidding, then don’t vote.” It’s really that simple.

He knows that with a big enough turnout against him and Republicans, it doesn’t really matter what he does, he WILL lose. That’s why he’s doing this.

So that means voting in every single district, in every single race, even if you think it doesn’t matter.

That means holding your nose and voting for the Dem on your ballot even if they don’t meet your needs.

That means voting early, if you can, cause most of his shenanigans will be on Election Day. He tries to mess with early voting before the fact, but once it starts he pretty much leaves it alone.

It means signing up to be a poll worker if you are able.

It means that red state Dems need to hold your elected officials accountable. Don’t stop shitting on them if they hand over their voter rolls to DHS and pressure them not to if they haven’t already.

It means looking up who the Dems are running for Secretary of State and Attorney General in your state and lifting them up as much as possible.

I’ll leave you with one other thing Warner said: “If we allow the president to steal it, shame on us.”

Your vote and your voice is your superpower, but only when you use it. So prebut the hell out of these ridiculous arguments and let’s save democracy!

Yunior Rivas at Democracy Docket:

President Donald Trump used a primetime address Thursday to resurrect debunked claims about the 2020 election, allege sweeping foreign interference in voting and pressure Congress to pass the anti-voting SAVE America Act. But despite years of claiming that the election was stolen, he presented no evidence that any entity, foreign or domestic, manipulated votes or registration records, or in any way altered the outcome of the 2020 election. In fact, he didn’t even assert it. In a disjointed speech, Trump claimed China obtained 220 million U.S. voter files and accused intelligence officials — whom he termed the “Deep State” — of concealing election threats. And he suggested electronic voting systems had previously been compromised.  Trump also announced that his administration would declassify intelligence documents supposedly backing his claims. In fact, the U.S. intelligence community previously concluded that no foreign actor attempted to alter voter registration, ballot casting, vote tabulation or the reporting of results in 2020. Federal agencies also rejected claims that Venezuela, China or other foreign governments controlled voting equipment or manipulated vote totals.

Trump nevertheless described the newly released material as “brand new and irrefutable information” and said his administration would notify states about alleged vulnerabilities before the midterms. Then he pivoted to pushing SAVE, his pet legislative project that election experts call “the most restrictive voting bill ever.”  “Addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the SAVE America Act,” Trump said. “The only reason you wouldn’t do it is if you want to cheat.” The massive anti-voting bill, which has stalled in the Senate, would require voters to show photo identification and provide documentary proof of citizenship. Trump also demanded an effective end to mail voting, falsely calling the practice “inherently corrupt.”

In pushing SAVE, Trump has regularly claimed — falsely — that illegal voting by noncitizens is widespread in U.S. elections. During his speech Thursday, the president went further, saying that an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had identified 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections. He then directed DHS to notify states about these supposed noncitizens on the voter rolls and order their removal.  Trump also called for federal investigations, firings and possible criminal charges against officials he accused of suppressing intelligence. “Today, I’m asking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden,” Trump said. “To investigate how and why information about China’s election meddling and related security breaches was suppressed, and to fire those responsible for the cover-up.”

[...]

Declassified files tell different story

Journalists and experts who began reviewing the newly released documents noticed that some of the records appeared to contradict Trump’s central claims that China sought to interfere in the 2020 election against him. Journalist Sam Stein noted that one intelligence assessment stated Chinese cyber actors targeted Joe Biden’s campaign for intelligence gathering, but also concluded that China “does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try and sway the outcome of the election.”  Will Sommers also pointed to another declassified document showing that Russia — not China — was the only country assessed to have taken steps targeting the U.S. election process in 2020. “Russia was the only country trying to meddle in American voting systems,” the document concluded. Garrett Archer, a former senior elections analyst at the Arizona secretary of state’s office, likewise said the records did not support Trump’s assertion that China hacked election infrastructure.

Last night, Donald Trump delivered the same tired pablum of lies about election security and the 2020 elections. He also called for the passage of the anti-voting rights bill SAVE America Act.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Trump spews unhinged election conspiracy theories in speech TV networks refused to air

The Guardian: How Trump’s address was bluntly aimed at destabilizing the US electoral system

The Guardian: Trump makes unverified claims of China ‘election meddling’ as critics fear ploy to challenge midterm results

An open letter to the U.S. House of Representatives

Vote NO on the SAVE Act!

8,228 so far! Help us get to 10,000 signers!

I am writing to express my strong opposition to H.R. 22, the so-called “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility” (SAVE) Act. While this bill is framed as a measure to combat voter fraud, it is, in reality, a voter suppression effort that creates unnecessary barriers to voting and disenfranchises millions of Americans.

The SAVE Act would require voters to present narrow forms of “documentary proof of citizenship,” such as a passport or birth certificate, to participate in federal elections. This would disproportionately harm:

- Up to 150 million Americans who do not have a passport.

- Approximately 69 million women citizens who do not have a birth certificate with their current legal name on it.

- Elderly Americans, who are the least likely to hold passports.

Additionally, in 7 states, less than one-third of citizens have a valid passport – Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.

The SAVE Act is a solution in search of a problem. Worse, it would erode the fundamental right to vote, silencing the voices of vulnerable communities under the guise of election security. Rather than advancing harmful legislation like the SAVE Act, Congress should focus on protecting and expanding voting rights by supporting measures such as the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

One of the foundational values of our democracy is the idea that every person is entitled to a vote – a say in the direction of our nation. I urge you and your colleagues to work towards that founding ideal. Thanks.

▶ Created on February 6 by Jess Craven · 8,228 signers in the past 7 days

📱 Text SIGN PKFOYU to 50409 to sign!

Over the last month, the U.S. government has worked quickly to pause, disband and dismantle the U.S. effort to fight foreign meddling in elections, raising concern among federal lawmakers and election officials across the country who rely on the federal cybersecurity agency and its counterparts to warn them about attacks on election systems. 

First came a flurry of notices forcing out Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency personnel who are tasked with stopping foreign interference in U.S. elections — at least a dozen have been put on leave or fired over the past month. Then, on Attorney General Pam Bondi's first day in office on Feb. 5, she disbanded the FBI task force targeting foreign influence operations originating from places like Russia, China and Iran.