By Gerald Wolf
Spring Valley, MN
Securing an electronic voting system is rocket science. Counting votes on paper ballots by hand with your neighbor is not. In a lawsuit filed on June 8, 2022, against the Arizona Secretary of State, (frankspeech.com/article/smith-declaration-and-any-supporting-exhibits) Colonel Shawn Smith (Retired) USAF explains how Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) conduct computer attacks against the U.S. “The most severe threat posed to computer systems… are nation state operated or sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) groups.” (p.12 #26) It’s nearly impossible to protect a computer system from attacks from APTs. A system with no regard to security is like a bank with unlocked doors and vaults. Such are the machines that are used for voting according to Col Smith.
“It is difficult to convey the magnitude of inadequacy of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) guidelines and response to the threat of supply chain attack facing voting and election systems. In order to protect against (an attack) it is necessary to have qualified experts monitor, without exception or hiatus: the purity of every single material used in your device; the digital design templates and controls for fabrication; the fabrication of every single component, the resulting fabricated components, the assembly of all those components, composed of materials you have verified, according to your design, into a finished product. The same vigilance must be applied to uninterrupted expert monitoring of the finished product itself, including configuration, maintenance and updates, including 100% of installed code, for its entire lifecycle from concept through end-of-use. Only then is there even a reasonable chance to secure a system against supply chain attack. And, if ALL (emphasis mine) those measures are not vigilantly undertaken, then there is a reasonable chance of an undetected supply chain attack. NONE (emphasis mine) of those measures are or have been in place for our voting systems.” (pp.29, 30 #59)
A March 2022 report by the EAC shows that a local election in Tennessee was miscounted and the candidate selected by the voting machine was incorrect. The report states that all testing guidelines were implemented and followed. The “investigation” reported “the direct cause of the anomaly was inconclusive.” It took five months for the EAC to conduct the report which didn’t happen until local officials had found and resolved the discrepancy. “Had the Williamson County staff not noticed the anomaly, they would have reported inaccurate election results, and only after hand-counting did they have confidence in their results. In other words, no safeguard professed by the EAC or election officials or the election industry functioned properly to prevent or detect the introduction of erroneous code in our computerized voting systems, and the mechanism for producing trustworthy results was a hand-count of paper ballots.” (pp.33, 34 #65) No state, federal, industry, or election officials came in to determine who really won the local election. It was the good will and common sense of the county staff working in the local courthouse that smelled something rotten and lifted the cover to find the discrepancy.
Similarly, a Mesa County Clerk in Grand Junction Colorado, Tina Peters, discovered election errors in a local school board election. frankspeech.com/tv/video/frankspeech-thanks-thon-special-program-joined-sherronna-bishop-tina-peters-ashe-epp (1:28:00) Like the errors that were found in Williamson County, Tenn., the issues were found by a county employee after local residents complained about anomalies. State election officials were not going to help. The trend is that irregularities are getting caught when issues are identified and addressed at the local and county level.
Electronic voting systems are almost impossible to secure. Col Smith will attest that keeping the PRC and other APTs from hacking them is rocket science. Counting paper ballots alongside your neighbor is not.
Don Evanson says
Thank you, Jerry Wolf, for your concerns about the accuracy of our elections..
The problem is that most election judges, since they are “trained”, and many have served for many years, have total confidence in the machines,
They are mistaken to have that confidence.
And now, with the “experimental” use of electronic poll-pads for registration on election day, with them necessarily connected to the internet, we are placing ourselves at further risk for nefarious manipulation.
The Germans and other around the world mock us for using and placing confidence in the machines.
We must return to hand-counting, including absentee/mail in ballots, at the precinct level by bi-partisan election judges.
Less convenient, yes, but let’s get it correct.
More expensive? Do the research to find out.
Sit back, get out the popcorn, and watch as tge further science and reporting of this develops. Don’t be so confident that we know what we are doing.
Don Evanson
Minnesota City, MN
507-458-7735.
Joni Kallis says
If you are concerned about the integrity of elections and the security/validity of your vote, sign up tp be an election judge. I have been an election judge in the last three elections held in Rochester, MN. I became involved because of the need in the city and my interest in the process. I can say firsthand that voting in Minnesota is a very secure process with bipartisan affirmations of final numbers in each ward/precinct before final numbers are sent to the election office. Rest assured, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Anonymous says
Mr. Wolf, you present some valid arguments that could/should be discussed at all levels of government. Elections are not perfect events and like every process with a computer or machine component, they are prone to error from time to time. The vast majority of discrepancies have no substantive change on outcomes; and one or two examples at a local or county level does not imply a widespread or blanket error across the state or the country. We, as a society looking for maximum impartiality and quicker results, adopted electronic vote tallying vs hand-count-only in the early-mid 1900s (it varied by location). Even to this day, each state runs their elections (including voting equipment and validation process) differently. This wide range of equipment and processes actually makes for a more secure election since there isn’t one single point of failure or supply chain vulnerability that a foreign actor can compromise to interfere with the whole thing (security through obscurity). The federal government is and has been actively working against foreign APTs in partnership with the cyber security industry to thwart exactly the threat you describe. It’s on each state, with federal help, to provide the safest and securist election it can to it’s citizens … and if hand-counts are part of that, we will have to become more patient for the results. It is encouraging to hear that anomalies, although rare, are identified at the local level and raised for greater attention. Our election system still remains one of the most secure in our lifetimes, even with the unprecedented scrutiny. Now that you have been appointed as a head election judge for the 2022 Primary and General election, we will rely and depend on your impartiality this fall to ensure that the candidates that recieve the most votes are the ones declared the winners, regardless of political party. You and your fellow judges hold our election integrity and the core of our democracy in your hands.
Anonymous says
If you are bitterly disappointed that the attempted coup on January 6, 2021, did not succeed; if you are a huge fan of MyPillow & Mike Lindell; and if you believe that Fox News is too liberal, then the frankspeech.com website cited in the writer’s letter to the editor is tailor made for you.
This story, initially published by the Independent, appearing on the Yahoo News website on April 22, 2021, details the connection between pro-Trump advocates, Lindell, MyPillow and frankspeech.com — https://news.yahoo.com/frank-mypillow-ceo-pro-trump-175835698.html
A later story, published by Business Insider, appearing on the Yahoo News website on September 26, 2021, describes Lindell’s frustration with Fox News, with whom he’d previously had a cozy relationship. Fox apparently would not run his ads. Is he too toxic for Fox News? Perhaps so. But maybe they eventually negotiated a truce? Here’s the link to that story — https://news.yahoo.com/mike-lindell-trying-mypillow-ads-065245109.html
The article mentions both Tina Peters and Shawn Smith, who are both cited the letter to the FCJ editor and in this article published by ColoradoNewsline on September 21, 2021: https://coloradonewsline.com/2021/09/27/colorados-top-10-most-dangerous-election-deniers/
It seems that frankspeech.com represents Lindell’s attempt to mirror Trump’s TruthSocial website.
If we are to choose our local, state and national political leaders by some means other than by elections, we might do well to be concerned about the process by which that might take place.