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This technology allows for manipulation of registrations and votes with a few keystrokes.
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Texas Audit of 2020 Election Results Have Come In
It's So Bad That It's Taking People's Breath Away
January 1, 2022 by Kyle Becker
Review the print articles listed below about the vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines.
2004.07.29 - William Singer, Hart Intercivic whistleblower employee, sends a letter to Texas Secretary of State, Geoffrey S. Connor, outlining the following allegations against Hart Intercivic and the Tarrant County Elections Administrator. Mr. Singer alleged:
*Audit trail for Hart system had invalid entries and were aware of the issue
*Hart ran a “fake” public test of its computer system
*Hart failed to provide utilities for its computer systems to clients
*Hart failed to disclose that votes are sometimes lost during “disabled voting”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/another-evoting-whistlebl_b_17361
In 2007 the State of Ohio commissioned an investigation of Hart Intercivic voting machines under the EVEREST Project. Investigation found systemic issues.
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/butler/butler_html/
2007.08.03 - California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, signs an order withdrawing approval for the Hart Intercivic voting machine, citing amongst others:
*Quality of systems to be inadequate
*Physical and Security mechanisms inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrit*Contained serious design flaws, including networking interfaces not to be secure against direct attack
*Lack of crytographic protocols
2008.06.12 - A report by the federal governments National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reported on the security risks of Sequoia, Smartmatic, and Hart InterCivic.
Report documents that in 2006 the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CIFIUS) opened and investigation on Smartmatic’s US ownership of Sequoia. Smartmatic, a Venezuelan owned company, of which former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’ government was a 28% owner.
The report also documents that in April 2006 the Chicago City Council held hearings after the primary election results were delayed more than a week due to Smartmatics Hybrid Activator. It's reported that 15 Venezuelan agents flew into Chicago to “staff a behind-the-scenes war room at the city of Chicago’s election headquarters.”
Smartmatic seeks through a proposed purchase of the Sequoia loan/earn-out by Hart InterCivic to control the world market for Sequoia voting machines in exchange for licensing Smartmatic’s vote- counting software to Hart, an arrangement which Sequoia claims would violate agreements made with CFIUS and other federal government agencies.
https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/itl/vote/SequoiaSmartmaticReport61208.pdf
2010-08 - US DOJ press release on settlement reached in anti-trust lawsuit reached with ES&S election systems. Bringing in Dominion Voting systems into the US election market.
2010 - The New American Article about how the 2010 US Census data could be used to steal an election
https://thenewamerican.com/will-the-2010-us-census-data-be-used-to-fraudulently-register-voters
2016.07.30 - CNET news article outlines how simple it was for hackers to access the Advanced Voting Solutions Winvote machine and change the votes. The hackers said the machines used outdated Windows XP which made it very simple to gain access through USB ports and then control the machine remotely.
https://www.cnet.com/news/defcon-hackers-find-its-very-easy-to-break-voting-machines/
2016.08.10 - CBS News article states the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, saying in part: "Election security is critical, and a cyberattack by foreign actors on our elections systems could compromise the integrity of our voting process."
Roughly 70 percent of states in the U.S. use some form of electronic voting. Hackers told CBS News that problems with electronic voting machines have been around for years. The machines and the software are old and antiquated. But now with millions heading to the polls in three months, security experts are sounding the alarm, reports CBS News correspondent Mireya Villarreal.
2016.12.26 - PBS news article outlines Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s attempt to audit the paperless electronic voting machines in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Judges in her suits dismissed the suits outright. A cadre of computer experts agreed with her and said they had been hacking into voting machines for over a decade in tests commissioned by California, Ohio and New York.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/recounts-no-u-s-elections-still-vulnerable-hacking
2017.06.14 - POLITICO news article outlines how a former cyber security expert from Oak Ridge National Laboratory downloaded files from the Kennesaw State University's Center for Election Systems and uncovered massive vulnerabilities in Georgias entire election system, to include complete access to the Global Election Managment System(GEMS). The article details how state officials and university officials deny the systems are connected to the internet dispite all the evidence to the contrary.
2016.08.17 - Center for American Progress article has nine great solutions “to secure America’s elections”, when they were concerned about voter fraud, Solution 1 addresses paper ballots.
“1. Require voter-verifiable paper ballots or records for every vote cast
Voting machines that record votes and tally them are run on software that is vulnerable to cyberintrusions.24 Well-resourced hackers, whether funded by foreign governments or criminal syndicates, have the access, ability, and motivation to infect computerized voting machines and tallying systems across America. This can occur even if the machines are not connected to the internet. Attackers, for example, can deploy software such as Stuxnet and Brutal Kangaroo to target offline voting machines.25”
2016.10.24 - The New American article titled Aiding Election Tampering documents a lawsuit brought by Laura Pressley, candidate for Austin city council, claiming Hart Intercivic voting machines do not conform to Texas state law. Case was appealed to Texas Supreme Court where Ms. Pressley prevailed.
https://thenewamerican.com/aiding-election-tampering/
2018.04.05 - New York Times article reporting on the vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/opinion/election-voting-machine-hacking-russians.html
2018.07.03 - AXIOS news article. With 50 different state-run elections, vulnerabilities abound. From internet exposure to voter registration interfaces, databases, e-poll books, third party printed poll books, voting machines, to hackers at DEFCON accessing voting machines online, it is clear that the primary threat is online.
2018.07.17 - NEWSWEEK article. One of nation’s largest voting machine makers, ES&S, admits in letter to U.S. senator that previous election equipment had remote connection software despite previous denials that any of its systems were equipped with such software. Makers of the software, Symantec, told all of its customers to disable or uninstall the software after admitting it had been hacked in 2006, at the same time that ES&S was selling election-management systems with same software preinstalled. ES&S has exposed 1.8 million voters’ personal info in previous breaches.
https://www.newsweek.com/election-hacking-voting-machines-software-1028948
2018.08.13 - British news outlet GUARDIAN article. This article reviews multiple examples of voter data breaches, focusing on Georgia, including one example of a “rare error” that results in a state congressional vote flip. An inadvertently accessed trove of confidential info which included 6.3 million voters’ DL and SSN numbers, instructions on managing election systems, and the passwords to get in, in another example. It highlights potential conflicts of interest from the Secretary of State’s office related to the control of voting machines not being held at the county level, and also notes a Georgia county that experienced one local election that saw 242% more votes cast than eligible voters.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/13/us-election-cybersecurity-hacking-voting
2018.10.26 - TECHCRUNCH online article titled “Texas Long History of Problems with Hart eSlate voting machines” outlines a story of voter complaints regarding the Hart eSlate machines and votes being switched or eliminating votes for Senator.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/26/texas-voting-machines-changing-votes-hart-eslate/
2018.09.18 - CBS News article addressing concerns over hackers accessing voting machines in under 15 minutes and their susceptibility to attacks via Windows and USB ports. Antiquated machines and lack of funding may be causing states to lag behind in addressing current threats.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-voting-machines-in-the-u-s-are-easy-targets-for-hackers/
2018.10.10 - online blog by Jenny Cohn which documents the detailed history of electronic voting machines from the standpoint of their ownership and the actors involved in their development and marketing. The blog uses research by news outlets to document the intertwined ownerships, the political agendas and ties, the criminal histories of owners and developers and the passage of the 2002 HAVA Act and its implications.
https://jennycohn1.medium.com/the-corruption-of-americas-computerized-elections-3d5b77124ebe
2018.10.19 - NEW YORK TIMES article
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/opinion/midterm-elections-hacking.html
2018.11.01 - SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article that outlines how computer scientist J. Alex Halderman “rolled an electronic voting machine” onto a stage at the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) and demonstrated how simple it was to hack the machine. Halderman goes onto explain the outdated and antiquated technology being used across the country, the lack of paper ballots to create audit trails. Halderman states, “that one possibility is that attackers could infiltrate what are called election-management systems. These are small networks of computers operated by the state or the county government or sometimes an outside vendor where the ballot design is prepared.
There’s a programming process by which the design of the ballot—the races and candidates, and the rules for counting the votes—gets produced, and then gets copied to every individual voting machine. Election officials usually copy it on memory cards or USB sticks for the election machines. That provides a route by which malicious code could spread from the centralized programming system to many voting machines in the field. Then the attack code runs on the individual voting machines, and it’s just another piece of software. It has access to all of the same data that the voting machine does, including all of the electronic records of people.” The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a report urged all states to adopt paper ballots before the 2020 election.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-vulnerabilities-of-our-voting-machines/
2018.11.05 - GQ magazine article titled “How to Hack an Election”
https://www.gq.com/story/how-to-hack-an-election
2018.11.05 - NY Books article tells the history and the story of the vulnerability of electronic voting machines and how two companies dominate 80% of the market, ES&S and Dominion Voting.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/11/05/voting-machines-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/
2019.02.16 - SALON article story of how Philadelphia officials ignored cybersecurity concerns and purchased vulnerable electronic voting machines
2019.03.01 - POLITICO article reports on how several states are ignoring cybersecurity concerns before the 2020 election and are replacing their old machines with newer models that are extremely vulnerable to hacking
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/01/election-vulnerable-voting-machines-1198780
2019.03.27 - TECHCRUNCH article outlines how four senior Democrat senators called on the largest U.S. voting machine makers to explain why they continue to sell devices with “known vulnerabilities,” ahead of upcoming critical elections.The letter calls on election equipment makers ES&S, Dominion Voting and Hart InterCivic to explain why they continue to sell decades-old machines, which the senators say contain security flaws that could undermine the results of elections if exploited.
“The integrity of our elections is directly tied to the machines we vote on,” said the letter sent by Sens. Amy Klobuchar(D-MN), Mark Warner (D-VA), Jack Reed (D-RI) and Gary Peters (D-MI), the most senior Democrats on the Rules, Intelligence, Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, respectively. “Despite shouldering such a massive responsibility, there has been a lack of meaningful innovation in the election vendor industry and our democracy is paying the price,” the letter adds.
Their primary concern is that the three companies have more than 90 percent of the U.S. election equipment market share but their voting machines lack paper ballots or auditability, making it impossible to know if a vote was accurately counted in the event of a bug.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/27/senators-security-voting-machines/
2019.03.28 - SALON article
2019.08.08 - VICE article reports on the issue of machines connected to the internet and despite claims to the contrary cyber experts discovered 35 jurisdictions in 10 states electronic machines were connected to the internet
2019.08.12 - WASHINGTON POST article
2019.08.14 - TECHNOLOGY REVIEW article
2019.09.27 - MOTHERJONES article
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/defcon-2019-hacking-village/
2019.10.02 - THE HILL article
2019.11.04 - ROLLING STONE article
2019.11.08 - BLOOMBERG NEWS article
2019.12.17 - NY BOOKS article
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/12/17/how-new-voting-machines-could-hack-our-democracy/
2020.01.08 - WASHINGTON POST article Touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices (like Hart) are not secure against hacking. In fact, in one study, they are deemed “ extremely unsafe…especially in close elections.” Even though they produce paper ballots, the votes can be altered electronically, and the voter doesn't usually check to see if their vote was cast correctly.
2020.01.10 - NBC News “Online and Vulnerable”
Almost three dozen manufacturers have modems, vulnerable to hacking, in their voting machines, Hart included.
2020.01.10 - NBC NEWS article
2020.02.23 - AP News article
https://apnews.com/article/ae388fb69d14e5d3619128a591cdc0c4
2020.03.26 - British news outlet THE GUARDIAN article summarizes the information presented in a newly released HBO Documentary called Kill Chain. The film examines Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News, and focused on the threat of disinformation on American democracy, Kill Chain re-examines foreign interference in the 2016 election with critical and scientific distance. The film follows the liabilities of the American democratic system even further than fake news, to its basic infrastructure: the machines in poll booths across the country, the very method through which votes are tallied, the databases in which voter data – name, address,
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/26/kill-chain-hbo-election-hacking-documentary
2020.08.31 - POLITICO magazine article on the vulnerability of electronic poll books
https://politico.com/news/2020/08/31/election-security-hole-406471
2020.10.23 - ATLANTA-JOURNAL CONSTITUTION newspaper article
2020.11.04 - An article by govtech.com documents numerous Election Day problems with electronic poll books, quotes from the article are as follows:
*”Similarly, voters in Upshur County, Texas, extended voting hours through 8 p.m. after their KnowInk ePollbooks yielded "connectivity issues," according to a spokesman at the Texas Secretary of State's office.”
*”Failing ePollbook systems can hamper vote auditing programs that attempt to reconcile the number of votes cast with the number of votes entered, said Harri Hursti, a cybersecurity and election security expert observing elections in Georgia.”
*”Hursti said it's too soon to discern between technical snafus and a malicious cyberattack, but that early report from poll workers indicate the need for a broader investigation.”