Luther Weeks | CTVotersCount.org

Beware the vendor/technologist offering a panacea

The general public, legislators, business people, and many technologists – all of us – often miss-estimate the potential and applicability of technologies. I remember in 2004, my congressman, told an audience we did not have to worry about electronic voting because of encryption.

The latest “new” technology is Blockchains, the technology that underlies BitCoin. It has some valuable applicability, yet I suspect not that much.

Using blockchains for voting has been considered by academics for decades, but only as a thought experiment. If you ask any cryptographer who knows the basics of cryptocurrencies (remember, blockchains were invented by cryptographers) if elections should be conducted using blockchains, they would laugh and say, “Hell no, that doesn’t even make sense!”

Spending much of my career being called upon to evaluate various new technology, my experience is that many get the applicability and time frames wrong. In the early eighties I was assigned to evaluate personal computer technologies. In general, corporations thought they were late to the table in applying personal computers. In retrospect most were pretty much on time with evaluating the technology. I was called into my boss’s office in the summer of 1985 – higher ups had decided to pursue artificial intelligence in a big way, they did not want to be late, I would lead the effort. Its over thirty years and over the last few years some really good applications have been implemented. Maybe we don’t notice so much, but voice simulation and recognition were initially though next to impossible. We are still hearing about AI breakthroughs coming soon. I am sure they have been and will continue. So it is and continues to be with various technologies such as database, data communications, email, voice mail, and the Internet.

The latest “new” technology is Blockchains, the technology that underlies BitCoin. It has some valuable applicability, yet I suspect not that much. There was a recent Newshour show, (15min in) a Blockchain Caucus in the U.S. House, this recent article that claims election panacea status Blockchain voting app puts democracy in the hands of the people <read>

BITCOIN changed the way we think about money forever. Now a type of political cryptocurrency wants to do the same for votes, reinventing how we participate in democracy.

Sovereign is being unveiled this week by Democracy Earth, a not-for-profit organisation in Palo Alto, California. It combines liquid democracy – which gives individuals more flexibility in how they use their votes – with blockchains, digital ledgers of transactions that keep cryptocurrencies like bitcoin secure. Sovereign’s developers hope it could signal the beginning of a democratic system that transcends national borders.

“There’s an intrinsic incompatibility between the internet and nation states,” says Santiago Siri, one of Democracy Earth’s co-founders. “If we’re going to think about digital governance, we need to think in a borderless, global way.”

The basic concept of liquid democracy is that voters can express their wishes on an issue directly or delegate their vote to someone else they think is better-placed to decide on their behalf. In turn, those delegates can also pass those votes upwards through the chain. Crucially, users can see how their delegate voted and reclaim their vote to use themselves.

This is not the first claim we have heard that blockchains can solve the ills of electronic voting. It won’t be the last. The antidote to going overboard is understanding the natural tendency to get it wrong, look for panaceas, and knowledge. Take this from our friends at Free and Fair: BLOCKCHAINS AND ELECTIONS <read>

As people and companies seek new ways to conduct elections that make better sense in our high tech world, several startups have proposed using blockchains, or even Bitcoin itself, to conduct elections.

Using Bitcoin (or a blockchain) as an election system is a bad idea that really doesn’t make sense. While blockchains can be useful in the election process, they are only appropriate for use in one small part of a larger election system…

Using blockchains for voting has been considered by academics for decades, but only as a thought experiment. If you ask any cryptographer who knows the basics of cryptocurrencies (remember, blockchains were invented by cryptographers) if elections should be conducted using blockchains, they would laugh and say, “Hell no, that doesn’t even make sense!” While blockchains are great at securely storing information, they do literally nothing to solve the many, many challenges that elections face, like the necessity for voter anonymity, the ability to determine that only eligible voters cast votes, that only legal votes are tabulated, and that ballots and ballot boxes cannot be manipulated by anyone, etc… and the list goes on. Blockchains do nothing to address any of these critical issues.

We do believe blockchains can be useful. But like many technologies they are not a panacea. There will be applicability, yet I would not expect much from a bitchain caucus and hope my representative spends his time elsewhere. Yet, I could always be wrong.

Beware of the Watchdog that does not bark any details

NYTimes story that justifies our skepticism on NC ePollbook story: In Election Interference, Its What Reporters Didn’t Find That Matters

Among other things, we learned that intelligence agencies had intentionally worded their conclusions to specifically address “vote tallying,” not the back-end election systems—conclusions that were not even based on any in-depth investigation of the state election systems or the machines themselves, but on the accounts of American spies and digital intercepts of Russian communications, as well as on assessments by the Department of Homeland Security—which were largely superficial and not based on any in-depth investigation of the state electionsystems or machines themselves.

As we said in our earlier post: See No Evil, Find No Monkey Business, ePollbook Edition

the simple case is that we now have no reason to trust the claim that it was all a simple software error, that the Federal and State Governments were actually protecting us.

NYTimes story that justifies our skepticism on NC ePollbook story: In Election Interference, Its What Reporters Didn’t Find That Matters <read>

I had been on the cyber beat for six years and had grown accustomed to deep, often lengthy digital forensics analyses of cyber attacks against a wide range of targets: Silicon Valley start-ups, multinational conglomerates, government agencies and our own Times breach by Chinese government hackers. In the vast majority of cases, it takes investigators months or years to discover that hackers had indeed been lurking undetected on victims’ machines…

Yet American intelligence officials were adamant in a report in January—just two months after Election Day—that vote tallies had not been hacked. This despite the broad consensus among United States intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election through an extensive disinformation and propaganda campaign, as well as the hacking of electoral databases and websites, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

My colleagues Michael Wines, Matthew Rosenberg and I set out to find out how government officials had nixed the possibility of vote hacking so readily. It was especially unclear to us given that officials at the Department of Homeland Security testified last fall that Russian hackers probed election systems in 21 states, with varying degrees of success, and that months later, a National Security Agency report found that Russian hackers had indeed successfully infiltrated VR Systems, an election service provider in eight states, including he battlegrounds North Carolina, Florida and Virginia.

As we dug more into our investigation, the more unresolved incidents we found.

Among other things, we learned that intelligence agencies had intentionally worded their conclusions to specifically address “vote tallying,” not the back-end election systems—conclusions that were not even based on any in-depth investigation of the state election systems or the machines themselves, but on the accounts of American spies and digital intercepts of Russian communications, as well as on assessments by the Department of Homeland Security—which were largely superficial and not based on any in-depth investigation of the state election systems or machines themselves.

In fact, we discovered that precious little research had been conducted, the result of legal limits on the authority of intelligence agencies to address domestic issues and states’ historic reluctance to permit federal oversight of elections.

This is associated with another story in the NYTimes: Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny<read>

In Durham, a local firm with limited digital forensics or software engineering expertise produced a confidential report, much of it involving interviews with poll workers, on the county’s election problems. The report was obtained by The Times, and election technology specialists who reviewed it at the Times’ request said the firm had not conducted any malware analysis or checked to see if any of the e-poll book software was altered, adding that the report produced more questions than answers.

Neither VR Systems — which operates in seven states beyond North Carolina — nor local officials were warned before Election Day that Russian hackers could have compromised their software. After problems arose, Durham County rebuffed help from the Department of Homeland Security and Free & Fair, a team of digital election-forensics experts who volunteered to conduct a free autopsy. The same was true elsewhere across the country.

As we said in our earlier post: See No Evil, Find No Monkey Business, ePollbook Edition <read>

the simple case is that we now have no reason to trust the claim that it was all a simple software error, that the Federal and State Governments were actually protecting us.

We will post this under Skullduggery and Errors, since obfuscating and distorting the facts is deliberate skullduggery.

Registrars mess up, City (taxpayers) pay fines, eventually

“Justice delayed is justice denied.” What could be worse? Perhaps “Justice delayed and fines transferred to the victims.”

In 2014 the Registrars in Hartford failed to provide check-off lists to polling places in time for voting to begin at 6:00am. From the stories of the public and explanations from officials at the time, it seems pretty clear it was not a simple error or comedy of errors.

Editorial
The pollbook delay went beyond incompetence. These conclusions and fines should not take close to three years. The well-compensated registrars should be paying the fines not the City.

“Justice delayed is justice denied.” What could be worse? Perhaps “Justice delayed and fines transferred to the victims.”

From the Courant: City Fined $9,600 For Election Day Problems – Investigation Critical Of Registrars Of Voters <read>

The state Elections Enforcement Commission has fined the city of Hartford $9,600 for the 2014 Election Day snafus that left many people, including the governor, unable to vote when polls opened.

The state’s investigation found that the three Hartford registrars of voters didn’t finish preparing the official voter registry lists until a half hour before polls opened and, because of that, 14 polling places opened late or without the proper voter lists needed to check off names…

Even after polls closed, the registrars had issues. The investigation found that there was a 2,035-vote discrepancy in the number of ballots cast for governor versus the number of people check ed off as having voted. There also was a 93-vote discrepancy in absentee ballots.

After a second count, the absentee ballot disparity was corrected, but there was still a 1,542 difference in votes for governor that was never resolved.

The investigation is critical of all three Hartford Registrars—Republican Sheila Hall, Democrat Olga Vazquez and Working Families Party Urania Petit—but was particularly harsh toward Vazquez, who was tasked with getting the voter rolls ready.

“Ms. Vazquez’s wantonly poor decision-making reflected either a too casual approach to her work, or a serious deficiency in her ability to do the job,” the report concluded.

Vazquez was in charge of getting the voter registry lists to the moderators at each of the 24 polling places. But the books weren’t sent to the printer until only a few days before the election, and the registrars didn’t cross absentee voters off the lists until only two days before the election. They didn’t

complete that task until 5:30 a.m. on Election Day—a half hour before polls were to open.

The investigation made it clear the delay was primarily Vazquez’s fault.

“Starting with a misreading of the election calendar concerning when she needed to print the list—an inexcusable mistake by a registrar with her experience—she appeared to miss opportunity after opportunity to avoid the slowly unfolding calamity that rolled into the public eye on the morning of Election Day,” the report concluded.

Our Editorial
The pollbook delay went beyond incompetence. These conclusions and fines should not take close to three years. The well-compensated registrars should be paying the fines not the City.

Also victimized are the voters of the State and candidates for State Office who depend on every municipality to conduct fair and accurate elections.

Why Signatures and Checking Them Matter

A vigilant Registrar in New Haven pursues suspicions. From the New Haven Independent Judge Hopeful Submits Forged Signatures <read>

Americo Carchia Wednesday said he’s considering whether to end his campaign for probate judge and vowed to cooperate with any potential criminal investigations after learning that he had submitted petitions with forged signatures to qualify for the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot.

A vigilant Registrar in New Haven pursues suspicions. From the New Haven Independent Judge Hopeful Submits Forged Signatures <read>

Americo Carchia Wednesday said he’s considering whether to end his campaign for probate judge and vowed to cooperate with any potential criminal investigations after learning that he had submitted petitions with forged signatures to qualify for the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot.

Carchia turned in petitions on Aug. 9 with the names and alleged signatures of over 2,000 registered New Haven Democratic voters putatively supporting having his name appear on the Sept. 12 primary ballot against party-endorsed candidate Clifton Graves Jr. He needed 1,852 certified signatures to qualify; the Registrar of Voters office found 1,982 signatures to be valid — based on the names and addresses and birth dates listed matching those of registered Democrats. So Carchia made the ballot

One of those signatures belonged to Andrew Weiss, a Yale student listed as living in Yale’s Arnold Hall. Weiss told the Independent by email Tuesday that he never signed a petition. In fact, he wasn’t even in New Haven during the two-week period at the end of July and beginning of August when the petitions were collected. “I was in Japan,” he wrote…

Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans Wednesday confirmed that she had filed the complaint with the SEEC after speaking with voters listed on the petitions who said they, too, had never signed. (SEEC spokesman Joshua Foley said the agency can’t confirm or deny receipt of such a complaint until the full commission meets and votes on whether to launch an investigation.)

Carchia was shaken as he received photocopies of all his petitions from the City Clerk’s office before visiting the Registrar of Voters Office to learn more about the approval process.

“I can’t be more numb right now. Look at these!” he exclaimed.

“I’m seething inside.”

He said someone who gives him political advice — he said he couldn’t remember who — had steered him to Yellow Dog Strategies. He said he trusted that the company knew what it was doing. “It was difficult” to find enough help to gather so many signatures in just a two-week window, Carchia said. He said he had no knowledge of corners being cut by the consultants.

This is why signatures are important and useful. Its not that every forgery can be caught, yet when there are a lot of fraudulent polling place sign-ins, absentee ballots, or petitions those redundant signatures can raise suspicions or in other cases confirm suspicions.

Reminds us of 2004 in Ohio as recounted in the book Witness to a Crime, reviewed here. One of several incidents in the book was multiple districts with sheets of added polling place voters signed in with similar signatures – signatures of an election supervisor in headquarters, not at any one of the polling places.

Unlike Ohio and many other states, Connecticut does not require voters to sign the check off lists at polling uplaces and does not require absentee vote counters to meaningfully check signatures. As we too often say here, look for not evil, see not evil, find no evil.

Also outsourcing your campaign is not all its cracked up to be.

See No Evil, Find No Monkey Business, ePollbook Edition

NPR All Things Considered Russian Cyberattack Targeted Elections Vendor Tied To Voting Day Disruptions

“Voters were going in and being told that they had already voted — and they hadn’t,” recalls Allison Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The electronic systems — known as poll books — also indicated that some voters had to show identification, even though they did not.

Timeline: Foreign Efforts To Hack State Election Systems And How Officials Responded
Investigators later discovered the company that provided those poll books had been the target of a Russian cyberattack…

NPR All Things Considered Russian Cyberattack Targeted Elections Vendor Tied To Voting Day Disruptions <read>

When people in several North Carolina precincts showed up to vote last November, weird things started to happen with the electronic systems used to check them in.

“Voters were going in and being told that they had already voted — and they hadn’t,” recalls Allison Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The electronic systems — known as poll books — also indicated that some voters had to show identification, even though they did not.

Timeline: Foreign Efforts To Hack State Election Systems And How Officials Responded
Investigators later discovered the company that provided those poll books had been the target of a Russian cyberattack…

“I became really concerned that this might be a cyberattack, some sort of cyber event,” says [Susan] Greenhalgh.

Despite NSA Claim, Elections Vendor Denies System Was Compromised In Hack Attempt
But she had trouble getting anyone’s attention. Greenhalgh says a contact she had at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was concerned but said there was little federal officials could do unless the state requested help…

“States were very adamant about declaring their independence from the federal government with respect to the 2016 election and, of course, we respected that,” says Ferrante. “However, we wanted to make sure we were prepared and assets were available in the event that states did call us for assistance.”

North Carolina didn’t call for aid. Instead, officials assured federal authorities that things were under control and that they had switched to the paper poll books.

The problem was, on Election Day, the state was operating with limited information. It was unaware that Russian hackers had tried to break into VR Systems, which provided the poll books for 21 North Carolina counties.

It appears from the article that officials may finally be giving more scrutiny, yet the simple case is that we now have no reason to trust the claim that it was all a simple software error, that the Federal and State Governments were actually protecting us. And it is the very type of ePollbooks the Russians may have hacked. That is not all.

The investigation was triggered by the leak made public by the Intercept, allegedly from Reality Winner: Report from North Carolina Makes Reality Winner Leak Far More Important <read>

Because of the publicity surrounding the VR targeting — thanks to the document leaked by Winner — NC has now launched an investigation…

So this may be the first concrete proof that Russian hackers affected the election. But we’ll only find out of that’s true thanks to Winner’s leak.

Except she can’t raise that at trial.

Last week, Magistrate Judge Brian Epps imposed a protection order in her case that prohibits her or her team from raising any information from a document the government deems to be classified, even if that document has been in the public record. That includes the document she leaked.

The protective order is typical for leak cases. Except in this case, it covers information akin to information that appeared in other outlets without eliciting a criminal prosecution. And more importantly, Winner could now point to an important benefit of her leak, if only she could point to the tie between her leak and this investigation in North Carolina.

More voters than eligible adults? Group makes dubious claim

Our voting rolls are a genuine mess. But that does not mean election officials are not trying. It does not mean that slews of individuals are voting illegally.

We cannot make a job impossible and then blame officials for not being able to accomplish it.

Our voting rolls are a genuine mess. But that does not mean election officials are not trying. It does not mean that slews of individuals are voting illegally:

McClatchy story: More voters than eligible adults? Group makes dubious claim about California <read>

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla has twice rebuffed demands for voter data from a commission created by President Donald Trump to investigate unproven claims of voter fraud last fall. Now a conservative Washington, D.C.-based legal group has threatened to sue the state over what it contends are California counties’ failure to properly maintain lists of inactive voters. The Aug. 1 letter from Judicial Watch to Padilla alleges that 11 California counties have more registered voters than their estimated populations of citizens eligible to vote. The claim was picked up Breitbart and other news sites and prompted Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, to post on Twitter, “11 counties in California have more total registered voters than citizens over the age of 18. How is this possible?” Short answer: It’s not. California voter registration stood at 19.4 million as of February. No California county is anywhere close to having more voters than its estimated number of citizens deemed eligible to vote.

Judicial Watch’s claim rests on its inclusion of “inactive voters” – people who have been removed from active rolls after a mail ballot, voter guide or other official document was returned as undeliverable – usually as a result of moving. They aren’t reflected in turnout tallies or signature-gathering requirements, don’t receive election materials, and are ignored by campaigns.

Inactive voters nevertheless underline Judicial Watch’s math suggesting that Los Angeles County has a registration rate of 112 percent, for example, or Stanislaus County has a registration rate of 102 percent. The letter cites a “failure to maintain accurate, up-to-date voter registration lists.”

Like earlier studies that showed many dead voters still on the rolls in Connecticut, it is understandable given what election officials have to work with. We have no national ID card or ID number. Officials register voters all the time, but there is no reasonable way of identifying voters who have moved or died, so that they can be removed from the rolls. It is an especial challenge to cities with many low-income voters which move frequently.

We cannot make a job impossible and then blame officials for not being able to accomplish it.

BradCast DefCon: David Jefferson on hacking of almost every voting machine

As Brad says

Hopefully, what happened in Vegas does not stay in Vegas

We are not so optimistic. We have a long history of getting excited about voting irregularities and risks, followed by officials and the general public moving on.

As Brad says

Hopefully, what happened in Vegas does not stay in Vegas

We are not so optimistic. We have a long history of getting excited about voting irregularities and risks, followed by officials and the general public moving on. As Obama said in 2012 “We have got to fix this”. He created a solid commission that made a significant report, yet by then the country had moved on. This time, starting before the election, we have Secretaries of the State and Homeland Security telling us there is nothing to see here. Misinformed at best, self serving propaganda at worst. From the BradCast <read>

“That room was just crowded from morning to night,” Jefferson says, describing the room at DefCon. “And the amazing thing is that all of those successful hacks, these were by people who, most of them, had never seen a voting machine before, and certainly not the system sitting in front of them, and they had not met each other before. They didn’t come with a full set of tools that were tailored toward attacking these machines. They just started with a piece of hardware in front of them and their own laptops and ingenuity, attacking the various systems. And it was amazing how quickly they did it!”

Jefferson tells me, after all of these years, he is now seeing a major difference among the public, as well as election and elected officials (a number of whom were also in attendance), regarding the decades-long concerns by experts about electronic voting, tabulation and registration systems.

“I am seeing a kind of sea change here. For the first time, I am sensing that election officials, and the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI, and the intelligence community, and Congress, and the press, are suddenly, after the 2016 election experience, receptive to our message that these systems are extremely vulnerable and it’s a serious national security issue. As you know, in a democracy, the legitimacy of government depends on free and fair and secure elections. And people are beginning to realize that we haven’t had those for a long time.”

“I am seeing a kind of sea change here. For the first time, I am sensing that election officials, and the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI, and the intelligence community, and Congress, and the press, are suddenly, after the 2016 election experience, receptive to our message that these systems are extremely vulnerable and it’s a serious national security issue. As you know, in a democracy, the legitimacy of government depends on free and fair and secure elections. And people are beginning to realize that we haven’t had those for a long time.”

He explains how hacking methods attributed by many to Russians following the 2016 elections “are the same methods that anyone on Earth could use — insiders, criminal syndicates, nation-states other than Russia, as well, or our own political partisans. The fear, of course, is that these hacking attempts will be totally undetectable. But even if they are detectable, it’s difficult often to determine who did it, whether it’s an insider, or a domestic partisan, or some foreign organization.”

He also confirms what I’ve been trying to point out since the 2016 election, that despite officials continuously claiming that no voting results were changed by anyone, be it Russia or anybody else, “they cannot know that. They simply can’t know. Certainly in those states where there are no paper ballots, such as in Georgia, for example, it’s impossible for them to know. And even in states where there are, if they don’t go back and either recount the paper ballots, or at least recount a random sample of them, no, they can’t know either.”

“Election officials have fooled themselves into believing the claims of their [private voting machine] vendors that the systems are secure from all kinds of attack. And it’s just never been true,” Jefferson argues.

Not much different than what we have all been saying for many years. Let us hope with Brad that this time many will hear and act!

I highly recommend listening to the podcast which has much more than than Brad’s post. The election discussion starts about 40% into the podcast.

CTVotersCount is 10 Years Old

Birthdaycake Today marks the 10th anniversary of CTVotesCount. We had been planning the organization and the blog for a couple of months – we launched after the end of a summer vacation. We wondered if there would be any news during August?. Coincidentally, the Top To Bottom Review commissioned by the Secretary of the State of California was just coming out – that was quite a start – the Top To Bottom Review remains an important landmark in voting integrity.

Our goals remain:

To be a source of Connecticut election integrity news and views
To be a source of national election integrity news and views relevant to Connecticut
To be a repository of that election integrity news, reports, and links for reference
To be relevant, accurate, and interesting.

As we start our 10th year, our commitment continues:

CTVotersCount.org is dedicated to fairness and confidence in democracy, that election results must accurately reflect the intentions of the voters.

We want every citizen’s vote counted!
To be counted accurately!
And to be counted only once!

Common Sense: Limits on Testing From Turing to Self Driving Cars

At first this may not seem like Common Sense. We have the famous Turing Halting Problem which has some very important consequences for voting which may not, at first, make common sense:

Note: This is then thirteenth post in an occasional series on Common Sense Election Integrity, summarizing, updating, and expanding on many previous posts covering election integrity, focused on Connecticut. <previous>

At first this may not seem like Common Sense. We have the famous Turing Halting Problem which has some very important consequences for voting which may not, at first, make common sense:

We cannot use testing to be sure that the software in a voting machine will provide accurate election results.
And any hardware circuits are also part of the machine and come under the limits of the halting problem

It is worse, beyond the halting problem:

We really have no way of knowing if the software that actually ran on a machine when the results were created and printed was actually the approved, tested software.
We really have no way of determining if the results were somehow changed by some some means external to the software.
We have no way of really determining that the components of the hardware were what were tested were actually those running the machine.
There could also be permanent or intermittent hardware errors.
The hardware errors could include logic circuits, wires, or sensors.

At this point you may be complaining that this is crazy or at least not common sense.

Consider the idea of self-driving cars. How comfortable are you with them today? Do you think testing is sufficient? Maybe. Yet, they could be subject to intermittent errors and hacking – similar to today’s vehicles that rely almost entirely on software to translate the driver’s commands into action. See: <60 Minutes Shows Threats to Autos and Voting Machines are Real>

The NEW Rob Georgia

While attention was appropriately aimed at FL and OH respectively in 2000 and 2004, Georgia perhaps remains as the most questionable state for voting integrity in the nation. Many overlooked the questionable elections there highlighted by Bev Harris in Chapter 11 of Black Box Voting: Rob Georgia, Noun or Verb? <read>

Now we have the story on the vulnerabilities in Georgia in 2017 by Kim Zetter. Here is her 20 minute interview on yesterday’s Fresh Air: <listen>

And her earlier extensive article at Politico: Will the Georgia Special Election Be Hacked? <read>

“I was like whoa, whoa. … I did not mean to do that. … I was absolutely stunned, just the sheer quantity of files I had acquired,” he tells Politico Magazine in his first interview since discovering the massive security breach.

As Georgia prepares for a special runoff election this month in one of the country’s most closely watched congressional races, and as new reports emerge about Russian attempts to breach American election systems, serious questions are being raised about the state’s ability to safeguard the vote…

Be careful what you ask for. Georgia has gone from risky to even more questionable as the Secretary of State’s office is taking over the programming of the voting systems from Kennesaw State U. as the Secretary is running for Governor.

Now we have the story on the vulnerabilities in Georgia in 2017 by Kim Zetter. Here is her 20 minute interview on yesterday’s Fresh Air: <listen>

And her earlier extensive article at Politico: Will the Georgia Special Election Be Hacked? <read>

“I was like whoa, whoa. … I did not mean to do that. … I was absolutely stunned, just the sheer quantity of files I had acquired,” he tells Politico Magazine in his first interview since discovering the massive security breach.

As Georgia prepares for a special runoff election this month in one of the country’s most closely watched congressional races, and as new reports emerge about Russian attempts to breach American election systems, serious questions are being raised about the state’s ability to safeguard the vote…

Here is more on calls before the Special Election for Georgia to use a paper ballot <read>