The Trouble with Machines….
This November 1, 2023 report from Idaho shows that Hart InterCivic Ballot scanners accept photos of official ballots,
We use Hart InterCivic in Prince William County and many others in Virginia. (There are reports that HART admitted, along with Dominion and ES&S that they put remote abilities into some scanners but I have not found the supporting documents yet. If you find them, please email to PWC-EIWG@protonmail.com)
Then in hardly a minor problem, ES&S machines changed votes in Pennsylvania.
This was only discovered because voters are able to verify their vote in this Pennsylvania County (we cannot do this in Virginia), https://www.lehighvalleynews.com/elections/election-2023-widespread-voting-machine-problems-reported-in-northampton-county
ES&S is used in Fairfax and multiple counties in Virginia. Why should we trust this company?
Election 2023: County exec ‘livid’ at voting machine trouble but confident in accurate count
LehighValleyNews.com | By Molly Bilinski,
Stephanie Sigafoos, Tom Shortell
Published November 7, 2023 at 11:30 AM EST
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — A flaw in Northampton County’s voting machines forced multiple polling places to turn to provisional ballots Tuesday morning.
A programming error with the county’s ES&S ExpressVote XL machines is causing votes to flip when voters split their votes on retention questions for Superior Court judges Jack Panella and Victor P. Stabile. Panella, of Palmer Township, is a Democrat while Stabile is a former chair of the Cumberland County Republican Committee.
If a voter cast a “Yes” vote for one of the incumbents, but a “No” vote for the other, the votes come out flipped, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure said.
McClure characterized the error as relatively minor and stressed all votes will be counted. But he expressed his frustration that the mistake wasn’t caught during pre-election testing.
“I’m livid at the election folks and ES&S,” McClure said.
LehighValleyNews.com staff found poll workers across the county pulled their machines off-line and relied on provisional ballots when the error was discovered in the early hours after voting precincts opened.. After the first few reports, county officials texted all locations to keep workers informed, according to a county news release.
But Northampton County Judge Abe Kassis ruled Tuesday morning that the county could continue to use the machines, McClure said. In cases where the error would pop up for the retention question, the county would flip the results during the post-election canvass. This followed a recommendation by the Pennsylvania Department of State, McClure said.
Glenn Geissinger, chair of the Northampton County Republican Committee, said his party intends to appeal this decision.
His committee supports extending voting hours to accommodate any voters who may have been turned away but objects to allowing the county to interpret how flipped votes for the Superior Court retention question should be handled, he said.
Problems began early
The flaw appears to have been discovered relatively quickly. By 8:30 a.m., 90 minutes after the polls opened, voting machines had already been cast aside in multiple polling places.
The problems appeared widespread, with voters using paper ballots at Bethany Wesleyan Church on Blue Mountain Drive in Cherryville, Lehigh Township.
The same problem was ongoing at College Hill Presbyterian Church on College Hill in Easton and at the Allen Township Fire Company on Howertown Road.
“It’s a joke,” Sherri Hahn said after using a provisional ballot at the Allen Township Fire Company off Howertown Road. “We don’t even have faith in the electoral system, then this happens?”
“I don’t think I’ve used a paper ballot since Nixon!” said another voter who hustled to her car after voting at the firehouse.
Just after 10 a.m., there were no reported problems with voting machines at the Banana Factory in Bethlehem, but at the Charles Chrin Community Center in Palmer Township, officials said machines that were down earlier in the morning were back up.
“We were surprised that there was absolutely nobody [at the Banana Factory],” said Lola Samiian.
“We gave ourselves an hour and it only took 10 minutes,” Stephanie Eliseo said.
Both women are Lehigh University seniors, and were just two of the 25 votes cast at that location.
Election officials for Palmer Middle 1 said there were 60 votes cast. Palmer Middle 2 had 63 votes recorded.
Second problem in five years
This isn’t the first time Northampton County has had issues with the ES&S voting machines.
The county purchased the machines ahead of the 2019 municipal general election as part of a statewide election security update. But in their first action, the county found many of the oversized touchscreens were not properly calibrated, making it tricky to select the desired candidate in some instances.
Later in the evening, election officials discovered a bigger problem. After tallying electronic results from multiple precincts, Kassis – then a county judge candidate – had no votes in his campaign for county judge – a statistical impossibility. Further investigation determined that his electronic votes were not being saved. The election was salvaged because the print receipts correctly recorded the votes, and Kassis went on to win a spot on the bench.
McClure, who advocated for the county purchasing the machines, said Tuesday he was not yet looking to move on from the machines. It’s common for counties to encounter hiccups on Election Day, he said.
He said the problem should have been caught by ES&S or county officials during logic and accuracy testing – a pre-election stress test of the machines and software. But those tests did not split the votes on the Superior Court retention questions – the trials used all “Yes” or all “No” votes, he said.
“Our election officials on this one relatively minor issue failed, and so did ES&S,” he said. “I’m not sure it means you scrap the whole system.”
Under the county system, the county prepares the ballot and sends it to ES&S for programing, McClure said.
This developing story will be updated.
Here ES&S admits in court it was a coding ‘error’….but our experts this was NOT an error!
A judge in Georgia rules Dominion has significant security flaws.
One source for this story is, https://www.westernjournal.com/georgia-judge-allows-challenge-dominion-voting-machines-continue/ and the case text can be found here. Dominion is used in multiple counties in Virginia. Though we use a different system version why should we trust this comany?
Tennessee Inherits the Dominion Flaws and The Secretary of State of Tennessee recommends removal of the Dominion machines in Williamson County Tennessee.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ujS_KvJFhpQutEoj88x4H55wDGQE_SCB/view
We also noticed both DemTech pollbooks connecting to public WI-FI and KnowInk pollbooks having full internet search ability with all iPad apps installed and available.
The York election officer pointed out the ability to search for cats and dogs in the search engine and articles came up. This was then verified by the York County IT for KnowInk, and can be FOIA’d. Also a Loudoun County election officer who found one DemTech pollpad ‘out of sync’ with the others and checked its connection at 10:30 am, and found it has connected to the public WI-FI instead of its network.
The Virginia state pollbook certification does not test for these potential problems.
You can view the test cases used for the DemTach certification below, and they are the same test cases used for the KnowInk pollbook system. Anyone technical will notice how loose the requirements really are.