On today’s BradCast, after a necessarily quick news round-up today (on Cory Booker dropping out of the Democratic Presidential nominating contest and the Trump Administration’s continuing attempt to lie about about Donald Trump’s unlawful assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani), we get on to the most important business of the day — at least for voters in the state of California, though all across the country as well.
Brand-new, 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen Ballot Marking Device (BMD) voting systems, which all voters at the polls will be forced to use for the first-time in the 2020 Presidential election in Los Angeles County, beginning with the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, are currently undergoing the CA state certification process. The $300 million system is failing state security and certification testing miserably, according to documents buried at the CA Sec. of State website, and reported on today’s program for the first time.
In addition to producing a computer-marked ballot that can never be verified as reflecting any voters’ intent after an election, documentation of state certification tests of the new “Voting Solutions for All People” system (or VSAP), reveal a myriad of incredibly serious security failures and violations of state law, according to experts we’ve consulted.
As we detail on today’s program, the testers have discovered, among other very serious concerns, more than 40 violations of California Voting System Standards, including findings that reveal:
- The VSAP system can be booted from a USB drive that would bypass all security and logging protections and that access to the master account is needed for too many things, meaning that “too many people have access to the root password,” according to state testers. That means “The excessive root access and the ability to boot the system from a USB port give access to the system by unauthorized individuals. Either scenario can result in undetected changes to files and data…Both scenarios can allow functions to be executed in non-intended ways. The unrestricted access to, and the ability to boot from, the USB port allows access to voting data”;
- Many problems were discovered with security regarding encryption and cryptography in the new system;
- The testers discovered “It is possible to insert or remove ballots from both the BMD and ballot transfer boxes without detection”;
- “The printer cover allows access to the ballot box and can be opened without detection”;
- “Seals, locks, labels and sensors can all be bypassed” without detection.
Those are just some of the many findings that led one national voting system and cybersecurity expert to wryly describe the results to us as “not good” and another to describe the system as “a security fail”.
Nonetheless, CA Secretary of State Alex Padilla could still certify the systems for use in the 2020 primaries and general election anyway, following the passage of a law he championed in 2013 as a State Senator that gives the SoS the ability to approve the use of new voting systems, even if they fail both federal and state testing, for actual elections.
The very quiet Public Comment period regarding certification of the unverifiable, unsecure VSAP touchscreen computer voting system ends next Monday, Jan. 20, 2020 at 5pm Pacific Time. We are urging those concerned to contact the state at VotingSystems@sos.ca.gov immediately to ask them to not certify this dangerous, unverifiable system, and to require a HAND-MARKED paper ballot for all voters at the polling place in this year’s crucial primary and general elections.
We offer much more frightening detail on all of this on today’s program regarding the dangers of this type of voting system as they are proliferating not just in Los Angeles County, but also in key battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and many others before the critical 2020 elections begin in just weeks time!
We appear to be the only media outlet, to our knowledge, reporting this important information on the failed VSAP tests out of California, so please share widely! We cannot afford to wait until corporate media bother to notice (such as NBC News, which just noticed on Friday a very serious concern about modems in voting systems in several battleground states that we had covered on The BradCast more than six months ago!)…
Letter sent – and I’d already mailed an application for permanent vote-by-mail, because I don’t want to use a machine that’s that bad.
I begin to wonder if this adamant insistence on using such clearly flawed equipment isn’t how the Democrats intend to do what Republicans do in Georgia and Kansas, for instance. Who cares what the voters want! The Party will decide for us!
PJ Evans @1:
Thank you! Don’t forget to a) Let them know which party you want to vote for in the primary (if you’re registered as Non-Partisan) and b) Please drop that Vote-by-Mail ballot off in person on Election Day if you can, to maximize the odds of your vote being counted and counted correctly!
Matt Froelich @2:
I see no evidence of that. I’ve been covering the VSAP nightmare for about 10 years now. I see idiocy, however. And an intransigent belief that they are doing something good, even long after scientists have warned them otherwise. (Scientists who, themselves, once had confidence in this type of system…despite warnings from li’l ol me to the contrary.)
I requesting lifetime mail-in paper ballots. They’re much safer.
Email, including a link to this article, sent.
CITY DAMAGE CLAIM FILED OVER DENIAL EQUAL OPPORTUNITY. The candidate forum for District 10 for today at FAME Church is the subject of a Claim for Damages filed with the Los Angeles City clerk’s office on January 22, 2020. A similar complaint was filed with the State Department of Fair Employment and Housing for denial of “equal privileges, services” etc. under the State Unruh Act on January 23. The 32 page complaint asks for money damages for “the politics of exclusion”, “denial of equal opportunity by Church and councils”, “violation of IRS regulations re Churches and Political Candidates” abuse of city tax dollars, interference with the election process, violation city code of ethics etc. Named as parties are Los Angeles city department of Neighborhood Empowerment, all city funded neighborhood councils, Holman Church members and employees, FAME church members and employees, Messob Ethiopian Restaurant, the Ethiopian Democratic Club, USC, LA County Board of Supervisors, Mark Ridley Thomas, Melvin Snell, Channing Martinez, Aura Vasquez, Grace Yoo. A related article can be seen at the website https://wp.me/P57D2C-KE or Google 2020committeetoelectjohnson.com and see “disqualification of candidates”. Anyone who attends or participates in the forums may be in violation of civil rights statutes prohibiting denial of equal opportunity. The three candidate forums have prohibited certified and qualified write-in candidates the equal opportunity to speak as candidates. There are over 250 write-in candidates who could potentially invalidate the election results. Ridley-Thomas should be disqualified for using LA County monies and position to participate in denial of equal opportunity, a violation of his code of ethics. Business as usual for Ridley Thomas. This is the third candidate forum that denied qualified write-in candidates the equal privilege to speak as candidates. THE SAN PEDRO RANDOM LENGTHS PUBLISHED A LETTER ON THIS IN ITS JAN 23 ONLINE NEWS AND FB.