On Dec 17, 2020, at 7:46 AM, Meade Dillon via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
wrote:
Dan, I'm afraid your experience is limited. Here in SC, the voting
machines were connected to the internet. Drove me nuts. I'm quite sure
the same could be true in other states, that certainly has been reported in
the press, and the "glitches" that always seemed to switch votes in one
direction (from Trump to Biden) point to the need for a thorough forensic
audit so we can be sure the right candidate really won.
Our system is similar to what many of you described: one machine where you
'vote' which creates a paper ballot, and then the voter takes their ballot
(which they can review to make sure it is correct) and feeds it into the
scanner, which counts the vote. Locally, at each polling place, the
scanner totals are printed out after the last vote, and the total number of
votes cast is compared to the number of voters who came into the polling
place. If those two numbers don't match, then they have to try to resolve
that at the polling place, with the poll watchers from each party present
(if they bothered to show up, a great many of our polling places had no
poll watchers - not enough volunteers). Once the count is resolved, then
the electronic votes and the paper ballots are taken to the county election
headquarters and reported out.
The first station at the polling place was voter check-in to make sure the
voter was registered / at the right polling place, and they (the laptops)
were connected to a local WiFi hot-spot that was part of the system, so
they could communicate / get updates back to the county HQ voter database.
I'm not sure if the ballot printer and ballot scanner were also connected,
but once the count was resolved, it was loaded back onto that laptop
somehow (I'm pretty sure via the local WiFi hotspot) and that laptop was
the way the electronic count was returned to county election HQ.
Here in Charleston, we had a lot of folks examining the totals and
comparing them to historical patterns, and although the results were
disappointing in some cases and pleasing in others, nothing was observed to
raise alarms in the result.
What was troubling to me was that we had three known instances of clear
violations of voting law at the polling places, where one party tried to
influence voters or intimidate poll watchers and so favor one party over
the other. This pattern has been repeated locally for years; one side is
convinced that breaking the law and bending the rules in their favor is OK,
and at every election we have to be ready to try to counter this to ensure
the fairest election possible. It is very easy for me to believe that this
same pattern repeats across the nation, and the impact can be enough to
swing the result in a tight race. If we had a tight race and these same
patterns of law-breaking and rule bending were present, I'd be among the
first to cry foul and seek a recount / remedy.
-------------
Max
Charleston SC
On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 6:53 AM Dan Penoff via Mercedes <
mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
Working with the SOE (supervisor of elections) here I can calm your fears.
As previously stated, a nation state, most likely the Russians, did breach
several state’s voter registration databases aound the 2016 election. While
problematic for a lot of reasons, doing so had no effect on the actual
voting process.
The actual voting systems, which vary from state to state, are always “air
gapped” in the sense that voting machines are never, ever connected to the
Internet or any network of any kind. As described by others, ballots are
typically printed out for each voter as they register or check in at a
polling place, filled out by the voter, then scanned by a completely
stand-alone voting machine. The votes tabulated in that machine are
collected on a memory card or other means of electronic storage that is
encrypted using state of the art encryption protocols. There is a clearly
defined chain of custody involving the handling of the machines, memory
cards, ballots and anything else involved in the process.
When auditing the results, paper ballots marked by the voters are scanned
by a machine and tabulated separately to compare with the results tabulated
by the voting machines.
It’s a very, very highly controlled process that has changed little over
the years. Most states and municipalities continue to use a paper ballot of
some sort in order to provide a hard copy of the votes - I’m not aware of
anyone who does it 100% electronically, although there may be somewhere.
The stories about massive numbers of votes being added/removed and such
are bogus. The process simply doesn’t have the capacity for such
alterations, and even if someone tried it, the audits done using the
physical paper ballots would quickly reveal any discrepancies. Mistakes do
happen, and they’re typically identified in short order when audits are
performed and corrected on the spot. It’s still a very manual process
everywhere I know of, and that’s one of the reasons why the integrity of
the process has been preserved.
-D
On Dec 17, 2020, at 2:09 AM, Scott Ritchey via Mercedes <
mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
My current NC county as well as my previous FL county used this system.
After marking a paper ballot the voter feeds it into a reader which
indicates that the ballot was accepted (read OK) or rejected (spit back
out). Accepted ballots are held within the machine. This is the best
system I know: simple, cheap, secure and auditable. Anything more complex
facilitates fraud, IMO.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kaleb Striplin via Mercedes, Wednesday, December 16, 2020 11:33
PM
Here in our state you get a paper ballot that you color in the squares
to vote. Then feed it into a machine that scans it and counts it. Even
though a machine counts it, you still have a physical paper that can be
hand counted later. Are other states totally electronic?
Sent from my iPhone
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