BOMBSHELL - ATTN Naysayers who think elections can't be stolen via machines -

[RandomAccess]

65. First, I should thank you

For some reason, you're the one who pushed just the the right one of my buttons to make me decide to jump back into the whole subject with both feet -- or as many feet as I can manage given other responsibilities I have at the moment.

But I'm definitely not thanking you for this:

The main salespeople for this kind of story are usually those who want to undermine democracy.

Are you accusing me of treasonous behavior, or merely being incredibly gullible? I'd really like to know. And I also think an apology is in order.


Now -- to respond to the rest of your post:

I have studied how vendors do their part, as well as how election commissions test the machines before and after and in the latter case, unless things have changed dramatically in the last several years (tip: they haven't), where election commissions are concerned, it's at best a case of the blind leading the blind.

NO MATTER HOW RIGOROUS the testing, the internal code, for example, can be written so that they pass all tests with flying colors, and at the stroke of polls open, they revert to the purposely corrupted code. The remote access Sen. Wyden recently unveiled can allow all sorts of mayhem. And then, of course, there have been cases of last minute secret "patches" applied. The simple truth is that when NO ONE is allowed to review the code itself, you will never be able to tell, never be able to be reasonably assured of a properly secured election. And even then, most experts who've looked into this disagree with your claim that better rules (or whatever) can properly secure our elections.

Where's the proof that you've found in your studies? It doesn't exist on a level we could take to a court.

No, that would take some INVESTIGATION at a level that hasn't happened -- and ONE reason is the states which have been identified as having problems won't allow it.

But to assume there's "no proof" couldn't be more incorrect, depending on what you insist on as proof. There is an incredibly amount of EVIDENCE if one cares to look. Do YOU care to look? Most people who like to argue with me don't.

Old-school ballot-box fraud at its most egregious was localized and limited in scope. But new electronic voting systems allow insiders to rig elections on a statewide or even national scale. And whereas once you could catch the guilty parties in the act, and even dredge the ballot boxes out of the bayou, the virtual vote count can be manipulated in total secrecy. By means of proprietary, corporate-owned software, just one programmer could steal hundreds, thousands, potentially even millions of votes with the stroke of a key. It’s the electoral equivalent of a drone strike.
https://harpers.org/archive/2012/11/how-to-rig-an-election/2/

I researched employee numbers for the major voting machine companies: ES&S is the largest with spprox. 450 employees, 200 in Omaha. Now -- how many employees do you think are doing the programming? Very, very few. However, even if it took quite a few -- let's say a whopping 1/4 of the total force (113 coders), it wouldn't take all of them to know about any sabotage of the code to create "preferred" election results. It's possible ONE key programmer -- a project leader or supervisor or the department head -- could do it, but certainly a small handful would be sufficient.

And here's some information about those ex-felons I mentioned (in case you thought I was making that up):

One would think (or hope) that a private industry entrusted with America’s votes would require the highest degree of personal integrity from its employees. As it happens, many of the key staffers behind our major voting-machine companies have been accused or convicted of a dizzying array of white-collar crimes, including conspiracy, bribery, bid rigging, computer fraud, tax fraud, stock fraud, mail fraud, extortion, and drug trafficking.
In 2001, for example, a grand jury indicted Philip Foster, Sequoia’s southern regional sales manager, for malfeasance and conspiring to launder money. During the previous decade, he had facilitated a kickback scheme that funneled payments to a Louisiana elections official, who purchased Sequoia equipment while winking at millions of dollars in overcharges. The scheme, which also involved Foster’s brother-in-law and fellow Sequoia employee David Philpot, was hardly an advertisement for the company. Yet Foster, who gained immunity for his testimony against the elections official, not only avoided jail time but was promoted to vice president of sales administration and strategies at Sequoia.
One high achiever actually got his start in prison.* Jeffrey Dean’s vote-by-mail software—developed while Dean was serving a sentence for twenty-three counts of embezzlement—came to dominate the U.S. absentee-voting market. Once out of prison, Dean launched his own ballot-printing company with narcotics trafficker John Elder. They later sold it to Global Election Systems, where, readers will recall, Bob Urosevich served as president and COO, before the company was sold to Diebold.
This leads us to a crazy-making realization. Although many felons (and prior felons) can’t cast a ballot in America—an estimated 6 million citizens will be disenfranchised in 2012 due to felony convictions—these particular felons are apparently free to design and manage our entire elections industry.
https://harpers.org/archive/2012/11/how-to-rig-an-election/5/

* Two comments: the paragraph with bolded text is about a key player; there were other programmers in the very small shop who were ex-felons too.
Second, I don't think anyone can fully appreciate this story without understanding what went on with Chuck Hagle's election to the Senate: https://harpers.org/archive/2012/11/how-to-rig-an-election/3/

BTW, that Harper's article, while somewhat dated, is quite a good, if lengthy. I strongly encourage you to read it. I used it today for my responses because it is so good -- but it's just one article of hundreds I have bookmarked here and there and will be drawing upon as time allows in the future. None of this is "conspiracy theory. " But, of course, one has to actually look at the information that is out there and available in order to understand that.

One final nugget to chew on:

The statistically anomalous shifting of votes to the conservative right has become so pervasive in post-HAVA America that it now has a name of its own. Experts call it the “red shift.”
The Election Defense Alliance (EDA) is a nonprofit organization specializing in election forensics—a kind of dusting for the fingerprints of electronic theft. It is joined in this work by a coalition of independent statisticians, who have compared decades of computer-vote results to exit polls, tracking polls, and hand counts. Their findings show that when disparities occur, they benefit Republicans and right-wing issues far beyond the bounds of probability. “We approach electoral integrity with a nonpartisan goal of transparency,” says EDA executive director Jonathan Simon. “But there is nothing nonpartisan about the patterns we keep finding.” Simon’s verdict is confirmed by David Moore, a former vice president and managing editor of Gallup: “What the exit polls have consistently shown is stronger Democratic support than the election results.”https://harpers.org/archive/2012/11/how-to-rig-an-election/7/

That's true of ALL the various "anomalies" that have been noted with electronic voting machines: overwhelmingly they favor Republicans. Overwhelmingly, where such metrics can be utilized, they defy probability (statistics). Here's a piece that discusses that in re 2016 Exit polls:

Updated, Expanded and Corrected Affidavit Version: U.S. 2016 Unadjusted Exit Poll Discrepancies Fit Chronic Republican Vote – Count Rigging, not Random Statistical, Patterns https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319205877_Updated_Expanded_and_Corrected_Affidavit_Version_US_2016_Unadjusted_Exit_Poll_Discrepancies_Fit_Chronic_Republican_Vote_-_Count_Rigging_not_Random_Statistical_Patterns