On today’s BradCast, some potentially good news for Philadelphia voters (and, thus, voters across the entire country), after a citizen led effort has resulted in the state of Pennsylvania re-examining its certification of a shockingly vulnerable — and wholly unverifiable — new touchscreen voting system selected by the city earlier this year (under questionable circumstances) for use in upcoming elections. [Audio link to show is posted below.]
But first up, before we get to our guest today and the astonishing election integrity nightmare against which he is working with a coaltion on the ground in Philly to try and save democracy there, a few quick news items to start the show. Those include the now-deadly, climate change-fueled heat wave bearing down on dozens of states and millions of Americans and the latest on the dangerously intensifying disputes in the Persian Gulf — thanks to Trump pulling out of the landmark 2015 anti-nuclear deal.
Then, last May, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would mandate HAND-MARKED paper ballots for every voter in the country, to help hedge against the possibility — some may say likelihood — of manipulated or erroneous elections results, and to help assure that results are publicly verifiable after elections. His bill, the Protect America’s Voting and Elections (or PAVE) Act of 2019 now languishes in the Senate, despite passage of a bill in the House that also mandates HAND-MARKED paper ballots for all, thanks to Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vow to disallow a vote on any election-related bills that might make our democracy more secure and overseeable in advance of the 2020 Presidential elections.
The White House has been similarly disinterested in improving election security and oversight, though Trump-appointed Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, the nation’s “top spy” announced a new initiative today said to help the Intelligence Community coordinate their response to potential election manipulation, at least from foreign threats. Domestic threats, including from election insiders — such as contractors from the private vendors who run much of America’s elections, as well as simple programming errors or other manipulation by elections officials — remain both as serious and much more difficult to guard against. Election protection ultimately comes down to public oversight, at the local level, of verified election results.
To that end, an Election Integrity coalition in Philadelphia this week has successfully petitioned the state of Pennsylvania to reexamine the Commonwealth’s previous certification of a wildly dangerous and vulnerable new computer Ballot Marking Device (BMD) made by the nation’s largest (and, arguably, most failed) private vendor, Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S). The company’s new ExpressVote XL is a 100% unverifiable touchscreen BMD system recently contracted for use by the Philadelphia Elections Board for use in upcoming elections, beginning with municipal elections this November and the Presidential contest next year.
We’re joined today by KEVIN SKOGLUND, election integrity expert and Chief Technologist for the non-partisan Citizens for Better Elections, which, along with others in the Protect Our Vote Philly coalition petitioned the state for a re-examination of the ExpressVote XL. The costly voting and tabulation system — one must be purchased for each voter voting at the same time in every precinct — is described as a “universal” or “all-in-one” system, because one computer in the system is used to mark and print a voters ballot, and a second computer in the same system is then used to optically-scan and tabulate that ballot.
The system, chosen under a mysteriously truncated process by the Philadelphia Commissioners earlier this year — “without any public or expert input” and with “no criteria for things like security, and resilience, and accessibility” as Skoglund tells me — also violates state election code in numerous ways, as detailed in the citizen groups’ petition to the state filed on Tuesday. Most alarmingly, however — especially given the importance of Philly’s one million votes to be cast in the crucial Keystone State during next year’s Presidential election — is a remarkable security design flaw in the ES&S ExpressVote XL.
In short (Skoglund offers more details on the show), the system allows the Ballot Marking Device’s printer to change votes on the computer-printed ballot summary card before it is tallied but after the voter has already been given the opportunity to approve what was initially printed on the ballot summary card by the computer! In other words, of all of the terrible, 100% unverifiable BMD voting systems that Pennsylvania’s Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia could have chosen, its City Commission chose the absolute most dangerous and unverifiable one.
“After this machine was certified in Pennsylvania, security researchers determined that there was a big flaw in these machines. That flaw is that they have a single paper path. It takes the blank piece of paper, it sends it to a printer, you make your selections on the screen, it prints those on the piece of paper, puts them back in front of the voter so that the voter can look at them and say whether or not they’re happy with those selections. And once the voter says ‘Yes, this is the ballot that I intend to cast, I am happy with these selections’ and they press the button on the machine, it sends that card back through the same printer again before it goes to to the tabulator,” Skoglund explains. “That means the machine has the opportunity to mark on that ballot — potentially changing votes on it, invalidating votes on it, adding votes to it, basically changing what the voter cast.” And, of course, the voter would never know.
While recent studies have found that most voters do not even bother to verify computer-marked paper ballots, and that of those who do, many do not notice if the computer has changed their selections, “The voter can do everything that’s asked of them, do everything right, they can verify that ballot, and it still might not end up being the vote that gets cast. This is a violation of a fundamental principle of being able to audit these paper ballots. It’s the whole reason we’re going to paper ballots, to have good evidence of what the voter intended.”
Skoglund explains, however, that it’s not just Philadelphia preparing to use these systems in 2020. Other counties in PA are considering them as well, even though they are at least twice the price of a paper ballot system. Similarly states such as New Jersey and Delaware are moving to these same, horrible, unsecure systems. Elsewhere, jurisdictions from Georgia to Ohio to Kansas to Texas to Los Angeles are all preparing to move to only slightly less vulnerable (if equally unverifiable) BMD systems for 2020. That, instead of simpler, cheaper and actually verifiable HAND-MARKED paper ballot systems.
All of that is just part of what we discuss with Skoglund today that will likely leave your jaw hanging open as you wonder what the hell these people are thinking, and why it is that McConnell has disallowed Wyden’s PAVE Act — requiring HAND-MARKED paper ballots for all — from becoming the law of the land long ago…
Is Russia being used as a cover for DOMESTIC
election-rigging?
This article (below) makes me sad.
Why” because so many good folks seem to think election-rigging is a new problem, and it is ONLY Russia who must have done it.
The Russian angle, IMO, limits the thought-process of many folks who SHOULD be looking at voting integrity issues in America.
IMO, if he ever read this article, Karl Rove would be laughing so hard he would be in danger of suffocation:
https://www.countable.us/articl...l-harriot-root
There are 3 possibilities that I see:
1. Russia has been doing electronic election-fraud since at least 2000 in the US, and it is RUSSIA who created the “red-shift” effect in the 1st place, or at least helped in these efforts.
2. Russia got involved in flipping votes electronically in US elections only in 2016, and this is a continuing factor for future elections.
3. Russia has been involved with social media and donating $$$ to influence elections (like the NRA and AIPAC), but has not done electronic vote manipulation in America, at least YET.
Russia is largely being used as a DISTRACTION and COVER for domestic US operatives of the GOP, or corporate operatives, who have been doing this electronic rigging all along, since at least 2000.
I don’t know about you, Brad.
But until I see concrete evidence to the contrary, I’m placing my money on #3.
I didn’t mean to imply Russia was donating to AIPAC.
But they have a[[arently used political donations (NRA, esp) to influence elections, just as AIPAC does.
Also, in 2016:
80,000 votes in 3 swing states made the difference in the election. IMO, these votes were likely inserted, with ‘surgical precision”.
Or perhaps the GOP just has a tendency towards “lucky accidents”.
Did Russia do it?
I dunno.
But Karl Rove and Mike Connell had those capabilities back in 2004, it would seem.
Maybe we should ask Connell about that, eh?
Oh … that’s right.
As my friend would say, “He daid”.
Final note:
The article cited above in my 1st post has good information in it.
But the writer basically steers his whole argument into the Russian camp, and parks it there.