The following article is intended to be the starting point for the discussion of the requirements for electronic voting machines. This document is not sponsored by any political party. It is sponsored by Grande Vegas online casino USA, but they did not specifically approve or disprove what is written in this article. (They just support Freedom of Speech).
What is the main goal of a voting machine?
To enable access to voting for all citizens while at the same time preventing voter fraud.
How are ballots are cast?
Prior to the American Revolution
People voted by a show of hands. This was rejected due to being easily corrupted.
Until 1800 – Signatures under the name
Voters would sign their name under one candidate or the other. So everybody knew who somebody voted for. This method had the advantage of being easy to count and hard to falsify, but the system was better suited to smaller elections.
1800s – Counting of paper ballots
As the size of the American government grew and parties became more established, printed ballots became common. Each party would distribute multi-page ballots with the names of the officials running for the various offices that were up for election. Voters would take the ballot from the party they wanted and drop it in the ballot box to be counted. Although it was easier to count, who you voted for was not a secret.
After the Civil War, the term “vest pocket voting” referred to people who kept their ballots in their pockets rather than displaying them publicly on the way to voting.
Question: So this means that in 1892 (after the Civil War) everybody was mailed a ballot that they then took to the voting place where they cast their vote. So if this was such a great system for voting, why was it rejected?
But just as today, “Liberal reformers” at the time believed it was manlier to display one’s preferences proudly. In other words, they wanted to know that you were voting for exactly who they wanted you to vote for. And if you did not, what do you think happened next?
1892 – Secrecy of voting with written ballots
Written ballots became popular, and with it, secrecy in voting.
1920’s – Lever voting and women’s right to vote.
1965 – Punch card voting
Punch cards were used to write computer programs, and store and write data. Did you ever watch the “Emergency (station 51)” TV episode where they had to go through patient computer records to find the previous patient who was trying to commit suicide? That is what citizens voted with. Even absentee ballots were punch cards. (Showing my age, but I remember getting the punch card the metal “tool” to punch who I voted for.)
This was also when voting restrictions were removed for “People of color”. No more “intelligence” or “reading tests” are required in order to vote, especially when a “Person of Color” was given a “hard” test and a “White Person” was given an “easy” test.
1975 – Bilingual assistance for non-English speakers
Summary of paper ballots
Throughout this whole period where we had paper ballots. Paper ballots were only discarded with the “hanging chad” disaster in 2000. But that was a problem with the punch card ballots specifically, not paper ballots in general.
It was a disaster that no state wanted to see repeated.
Voting Situation in 2020 – Dominion Voting Machines
28 States used Dominion voting machines, which are 100% electronic, connected to the internet through an intranet and VPN. A system that is ripe for fraud.
If you do not believe that Dominion voting machines (which were connected to an intranet — central database), read what happened to Colonial Pipeline and its Ransomware.
“Hackers gained entry into the networks of Colonial Pipeline Co. on April 29 through a virtual private network account, which allowed employees to remotely access the company’s computer network, said Charles Carmakal, senior vice president at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, part of FireEye Inc. The account was no longer in use at the time of the attack but could still be used to access Colonial’s network, he said. The account’s password has since been discovered inside a batch of leaked passwords on the dark web.”
“The VPN account, which has since been deactivated, didn’t use multifactor authentication, a basic cybersecurity tool, allowing the hackers to breach Colonial’s network using just a compromised username and password. It’s not known how the hackers obtained the correct username or if they were able to determine it on their own.” May 7, 2021
Less than one month later, on May 31, 2021, a meat processing plant was hacked and subject to a ransomware attack.
Now going back to Dominion voting machines. If Dominion voting machines (and machines that total the votes) are set up using the same type of security system that Colonial Gas Pipeline and JBS meat processing plant used, imagine if in 2022 or 2024 ransomware is placed on the Dominion voting network?
If I was a crook (which I am not), and I wanted to make a billion-dollar ransomware “profit” (potentially even a trillion-dollar profit), I would be investing millions in creating a “hack” to shut down the whole entire election system, and every single voting place would have to pay my ransom in order for their community’s votes to be released. I would be starting today to take down the whole entire voting system in 2022, 2024, and every single election after that, as long as Dominion voting machines were used.
If you thought that 2020 was bad, just imagine that scenario happening in 2024. Operate from a 3rd world country that has no extradition treaty with the US. I would basically be holding the whole entire United States hostage. With the leaders of both parties begging to release the voting machine data, and citizens screwing about voter fraud, no matter who won the election.
Fists would be flying. Cities would be burning. It would literally be “hell on Earth”. In some ways, it is hilarious to think about that. In other ways, it is pathetic, because even if the FBI knocked on my door to “arrest me” for writing this, the “leaders” of our nation would still not understand that I am not the problem. It is the Dominion voting machines that were designed from the ground up to be a “voting through a network” methodology.
Read Dominion’s advertising brochures if you do not believe me.
No, I do not have any plans to create a hack for the Dominion voting system or ransomware, and neither does the “sponsor” of this article. I am just stating a worst-case scenario in order to demonstrate that Dominion voting machines are not the solution to voting in 2020 and beyond.
Requirement: Zero connection to the internet. Zero connection to an intranet. No wi-fi. No Bluetooth. All ports are locked with a locking system that would require a Democrat “leader” and a Republican “leader” to open the locking system and a third lock from the local person personally responsible for everything that happens at that voting location on that voting day — if fraud happens under their watch (even one vote), they go to jail level of responsibility.
Grandmothers being inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021, for 10 minutes, just standing there, have been given a $500 fine and 3 years probation. If standing in a public building gives that kind of punishment, then certainly allowing voter fraud to happen under “your watch” deserves the same exact type of “punishment”.
Voting in 2020 – Fill in the bubble scanning machines
States like Connecticut use a fill in the bubble voting system. This is similar to how one takes SAT tests (and other standardized tests) except that unlike the old SAT fill in the bubble forms, these forms do not support #2 pencils. They support pens.
But there is a question about if they do or do not support permanent markers, because permanent markers can bleed through the paper.
There is also the problem in some counties where the clerks were told to only use pens during early voting, and to only use permanent markers on election day. Thereby making it easier to separate out early votes (mostly done by democrats) from voting day votes (mostly done by Republicans).
Some people say the distinction was done to “invalidate” the ballots, but from a technical perspective, using a pen or a sharpie marker, the ballot is able to be read properly.
So it goes back to the theory that by using two vastly different ballot marking devices it makes it easier to distinguish voting day ballots (mostly Republicans) from early voting and absentee ballots (mostly Democrats).
So this is more similar to a phishing security breach than a technology breach.
Requirement: All ballots must state that you must use a ballpoint pen. Although use of a marker should not invalidate the ballot (from a technical perspective), it should not be “legal” for voting personnel to place markers (or crayons) at voting locations. Friction pens should also be illegal.
Question: Is there a technology way to distinguish a vote done by a friction pen (erasable pen) vs. a standard ballpoint pen? At a voting place, the ballot should be rejected (spit out of the machine), and the voter allowed to resubmit the ballot (after correcting the issue). Absentee ballot? Reject the ballot, because no there is way to prove the ballot has not been changed?
Voting in 2020 – Ballots being scanned multiple times
There is video evidence that ballots were scanned multiple times. This claim was also made during the Obama elections and the 2016 election and was ignored in those elections as well.
How do you ensure that a ballot is only scanned once during a “count”. This would have to take into account that after 2020, counties might require multiple “counts” in order to verify that two counts end up with the same total. Maybe even 3 counts.
Solution: Paymaster Checkwriters 3000
Site: paymastercheckwriters.com
The Paymaster Checkwriter, which was common for small businesses to have before internet bank transfers became commonplace, pricks the paper with the amount of the check.
Now imagine taking this technology, and every time a ballot is scanned in, “counted”, the date and time that ballot is printed on the check, as well as the unique count ID number (of the total count for that location), is printed on the back of the ballot using this technology.
This would “prevent” the same batch of ballots from being scanned more than once, because there would be a “paper trail” Add on the unique id of the Democrat, Republican, and “local person” who is in charge of that specific machine. If it is discovered that ballots were scanned multiple times, the prosecutors will know exactly who to throw in jail.
Solution: Digital voting with a solid paper trail
Dominion voting machines do not have a paper trail, because the ballot that the customer sees is printed with Latin letter text. The ballot that the computer scans (“reads”) is a QR code. Therefore, a Dominion “vote” by machine can never be validated with a hand count, because it would be the same as you counting a bag of oranges and me counting a bag of apples, and then saying, “Look. We both counted ten, so we both have 10 oranges.” No, it just proves that one person has 10 apples in their bag and the other person has 10 oranges in their bag. But who says that tomorrow, when you count your apples and I count my oranges, we will both have the same number of fruits.
The solution is that electronic “paper” ballots should use fill-in bubbles, the exact same system that many states are currently using.
In order to verify the votes are the same, the “ballot box” needs to have a window where a person can physically see their ballot through a window.
