Attached below is our whitepaper summarizing our group’s progress over the last almost two years. We have an amazing group of dedicated passionate citizens who have worked tirelessly to accomplish these tasks. Please share this far and wide and educate everyone through both personal contacts, neighborhood or county meetings, or meeting with your local senator or representative. Everyone needs to better understand the issues and complexity of our current system. Complexity breeds corruption.
We also provide recommendations regarding how to create a better, simpler system that is more transparent.
County council candidate Joe Dill discusses his experience with his primary results, how he contested the results and the power plays that ensued that led the GOP to overturn the local Greenville GOP decision to let him have a new race.
He also talks about several people who had their votes “flipped” while voting in Greenville. Can we trust our complex voting process?
We recently spoke with the Dream Team of America First candidates about their experience with contesting their races due to illegalities and maladministration regarding the June 14th South Carolina Primary.
They talk about how they were not given the courtesy of time and proper procedures as well as that their own party was completely antagonistic. It is a shocking testimony to the state of affairs we are in.
Pat T. discusses how she tried to collect information and observe the primary voting process in Lexington County. Some interesting observations. Counties weren’t following the law with regard to examining the absentee envelopes and she saw an interesting anomaly when she observed the absentee tabulation.
Question for the audience: Have you ever voted in an election and just voted for one down ballot candidate? Me neither.
And below Nancy P. describes the issues she witnessed during her voting experience as well as her role as a poll manager.
There were several concerning issues including vote flipping, precincts moved for a large percentage of the people who came to that poll location and broken/voided security seals.
Our team recently spoke with Jeff O’Donnell to discuss his take on the SC primary and here is his overall take on his confidence in the results of elections after evaluating many systems across the nation.
By Laura Scharr, team leader SC Safe Elections Group
Gateway pundit ran this recent article on election machine certification or lack thereof. This is an issue that was brought up by many starting in November of 2020 and I personally testified about this to some of our South Carolina legislators last year in June. This past Thursday, June 23rd I again testified to this issue in a SCGOP hearing regarding irregularities in the June 14th primary. Here are the details:
First let’s state SC law with respect to system requirements.
S.C. Code §7-13-1640 establishes the requirements for voting machines used in South Carolina. South Carolina’s requirements adhere to the minimum requirements found in HAVA, the Help America Vote Act.
S.C. Code §7-13-1620 (A) further requires that: a voting system may not be approved for use in the State unless certified by a testing laboratory (VSTLs or Voting System Testing Laboratories) accredited by the Federal Election Assistance Commission as meeting or exceeding the minimum requirements of federal voting system standards
South Carolina is 1 of 12 states that require federal certification of voting machines. “Although participation in the program is voluntary, adherence to the program’s procedural requirements is mandatory for participants.”
HAVA, the Help America Vote Act is US Code that states that all rules and regulations as to Vote System Test Laboratories or VSTLs are put in place by the Election Assistance Commission or EAC. There are two main VSTLs Pro V&V and SLI Compliance. In order to meet its statutory requirements under HAVA §15371(b), the EAC has developed the EAC’s Voting System Test Laboratory Accreditation Program. The procedural requirements of the program are established in the Election Assistance Commission Voting System Test Laboratory Accreditation Program Manual. Even though the program manual is not statute. Statute dictates that the manual set the rules. The procedural requirements of this Manual will supersede any prior laboratory accreditation requirements issued by the EAC.
VSTL’s are VERY important because equipment vulnerabilities allow for deployment of algorithms and scripts to intercept, alter and adjust voting tallies. They also examine the use of COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) components which are a huge potential source of vulnerability.
Certification of our systems in SC
In the 2020 general election our state used our new machines/election management system ES&S version 6.0.2.0.
It was certified by SLI Compliance which was issued a certificate of accreditation on 1/10/18 with an expiration of 1/10/21. Note that our new ES&S system and election machines were put into place in time for our primaries after that test date, in 2019.
According to the vote system’s test laboratory manual version 2.0 effective May 31st 2015 manual page 38, the certificates must not exceed 2 years and must be signed by the Chair of the EAC (not the Executive Director), thus the laboratory’s certification was invalid.
The labs that certified the machines were not in compliance as they had 3 year expiration and were not signed by the Chair of the commission.
Here is a copy of the certificate for the SLI Compliance lab.
this certificate does not comply with Voting System Test Laboratory Program Manual, Version 2.0 as it doesn’t have a 2 year certification and it is not signed by the Chair of the commission.
The manual guidelines were not followed. Note that this was something that affected many states as these systems were used across the country. Furthermore, were there any materials or even minor changes that were made from 2018 until election day in November of 2020? If so, that would require an update to the certification/inspection to ensure the system was still compliant.
System upgrade to 6.1.1.0 that was then used in the June 14th primary
Our ES&S Election Management System was upgraded last year this time to version 6.1.1.0 and it was primarily updated to include Windows 10.
The 6.1.1.0 EMS was certified by Pro V&V, the other testing laboratory, and oddly enough that lab also was noncompliant. It had a certificate dated for the original certification of 2015 and the most recent cert has a 2021 expiration and is also signed by the Executive Director, not the Chair of the commission, so protocols and standards from the manual are not being followed.
notation on the certificate was changed to say “accreditation remains effective until revoked by a vote of the EAC.” This was done after several people starting questioning the validity of the certification of the labs in early 2021.
Once We the People started to investigate these certifications in late 2020 suddenly a memo from Jerome Levato was issued. This memo blamed the delays and lack of certification updates on Covid. Why then? Why not prior to that when Covid was rampant? His mea culpa memo was issued in January of 2021 and he left the agency the next month. Note also that they changed the notation on the certificate to say “accreditation remains effective until revoked by a vote of the EAC.” Note that the manual still requires a 2 year expiration date.
Government contracts arenormally highly scrutinized for compliance
Why couldn’t a small staff of people inspect a system and get the certification? These certifications don’t require a large staff that is in close contact with each other putting people at risk. We had real estate transactions and other contracts being signed during COVID but we couldn’t get our election system certified in an important election year? Seems very suspicious to me.
The test/certification for the 6.1.1.0 was in June of 2020 and they claim it was certified 7-27-20 prior to when it was upgraded in SC last year spring/summer 2021.
As a concerned citizen, I don’t feel comfortable with this process and these explanations. These are governmental contracts which should be under far more scrutiny than your private contracts. Why are we not following the rules? Are we a society of some rules count and others don’t? Do we just change the rules when we think they aren’t in our favor anymore? If the EAC changed the rules, why didn’t they change their manual to be consistent? If I had a marriage certificate that wasn’t signed by the right person would my marriage be legitimate? If I bought a house and the contract wasn’t signed by the correct person would that transaction be legit? The 2-year expiration timeframe is important as these systems are considered “critical infrastructure.” If they are so critical why was this process so lax and procedures not followed? And put your thinking cap on and ask yourself why these certifications weren’t done properly by BOTH labs? What might be the reason for that in critical election years?
In this video, a few members of our team discuss the issues with absentee ballots being viewed earlier than what our law states which is that they may begin examining the ballots no earlier than two days immediately preceding election day. Instead, the counties were directed via a calendar by the SEC to inspect these as they came in. This is apparently how this is how they have done it for years.
Absentee ballots are where a lot of fraud can potentially occur so these procedures are important to follow.
In addition, in Beaufort a gentleman who was running for a local race went to the polls to vote and his own race was not on his ballot! View his Facebook accounting of this here.
Apparently, the redistricting due to the census was not corrected so that the ballots reflected the appropriate races. This could likely affect all races where there was redistricting? Could mean there will be a lot of special elections post primary.
This article is a “mea culpa” from Cybersecurity and infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—the agency that famously said that our 2020 elections was the most secure ever and that the machines or election management systems can’t be connected to the internet. Now, just prior to the Halderman report being issued they are saying that the systems are capable of being hacked and that there are vulnerabilities that could have potentially affected more than 16 states. The Halderman report cites the issue of USB flash drives being one way that malware or viruses can be launched onto the election management system. This was an issue that our cyber expert Burl brought up in our recent whitepaper on ES&S. (And make no mistake ALL of these systems are vulnerable not just Dominion as they have similar architecture and software and are derivatives of the prior Diebold election system.
This is concerning as our ES&S systems across the state were updated last year to upload Windows 10 (they were purchased with Windows 7 in 2019). The method of upgrade was that ES&S representatives came and inserted flash drives into each machine to update the software. How do we know that these flash drives weren’t corrupted? Note that we have asked our election commission to provide evidence of penetration testing to ensure the security of our systems and there were no records responsive to our request. How can we be confident in our election infrastructure when we hear reports like this? We also know that political leaders on both sides of the aisle have complained about the fact that these election systems can be hacked. Here is a video of democrats doubting election results.
All machines can be hacked even if they are air-gapped. Early voting for 2 weeks only gives nefarious actors more data to know how much to cheat. We need to move to paper ballots and hand counting. Scrap the machines.
Are current South Carolina Election security procedures and processes adequate to ensure that the citizens have confidence in their vote? Is our election system transparent and secure?
The attached whitepaper was prepared in response to the various concerns about the certification and vulnerabilities of the ES&S election management system that South Carolina used for the 2020 election and will use for the upcoming 2022 midterms and general elections.
This paper is meant to raise the awareness of the ongoing issues with electronic voting systems. ES&S, Dominion and Hart Intercivic which are the main voting system manufacturers all have similar architecture and thus similar potential vulnerabilities.
This paper focuses on ES&S which is used in approximately 20 other states so the inherent problems discussed in the paper could be pertinent to these other systems around the nation.
As the paper states no electronic voting system is impenetrable. That is why IT experts recommend a paper ballot system with strong protocols to protect against fraud.
The citizens of South Carolina have seen too many examples of fraud –whether it be ballot stuffing through the movie 2000 mules, votes flipped in front of our eyes on election night, boxes of ballots being brought out from tables in GA, election data being erased in Mesa and Maricopa County or ballot marking devices switching our vote as we vote in real time, our trust in the process has been diminished. Our vote is our voice and if there are ineligible votes like what we found in our canvassing efforts that cancel out our individual and collective vote, we start believing that our officials are “selected” not elected. Our overall mission is ultimately to enhance trust in the system so that everyone believes it transparent, honest, fair and safe. Every legitimate vote should count.
Until we are confident that our election management systems are secure, we should not be utilizing the machines for any election. Our system has not been properly certified up to the current standards which is required by law. This leads to credibility issues with the results of the elections.
It is our hope that the appropriate measures such as penetration testing and other security provisions can be made to reduce the probability of intrusion. We provide several recommendations to do so. Until then we should vote using paper ballots or delay the primary until we can ensure our vote is safe and accurate.
Another way to evade any potential issues with the election management system is for the citizens to vote “en masse.” This is especially critical in primaries which have particularly low turnouts. If we overwhelm the system with the passion of our voices we can prevail.
