Tag Archives: paper ballots

I Think It’s Time To Go Back To Paper Ballots

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On Saturday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article illustrating how easy it is to hack into a Dominion voting machine.

The article reports:

In June 2023, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia unsealed the 96-page Halderman Report – the Security Analysis of Georgia’s ImageCast X Ballot Marking Devices.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had been hiding this report from the public for two years.

University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman and Security Researcher and Assistant Professor at Auburn University Drew Sringall collaborated on the report where they discovered many exploitable vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X system.

Far-left Judge Amy Totenberg sealed and covered up the results of the investigation of Dominion voting machines in Georgia and sat on the report until this week.

The article notes:

After the release of the report, Professor Halderman tweeted that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger would not install Dominion’s security patches before the 2024 election.

Now this… on Friday, in a Federal Court In Atlanta, Georgia, J. Alex Halderman was able to HACK A DOMINION VOTING MACHINE to change the tabulation In Front Of U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg in the courtroom!

Halderman USED ONLY A PEN TO CHANGE VOTE TOTALS!

This is part of a long-running lawsuit by election integrity activists set as a bench trial.

The plaintiffs seek to remove what they say are insecure voting machines in Georgia in favor of secure paper ballots.

Does anyone really believe that if an unethical politician had the ability to change votes in an election that he wouldn’t? This totally calls into question the results of the 2020 election. It also provides further proof that if we don’t fix or change the system, the election of 2024 may well be stolen.

Nothing To See Here

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I am beginning to wonder if America is capable of having an honest election or if our leaders just like us to work hard for various candidates every two or four years.

On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit reported the following:

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier, several voting machines in multiple districts across Northampton County had to issue emergency paper ballots due to “votes getting flipped and not recording properly” on their voting machines.

Shortly after the error occurred Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure was clearly frustrated about the problems at the polls and told Lehigh Valley News “I’m livid at the election folks and ES&S.”

ES&S (Election Systems & Software) ExpressVoteXL machines were used in Northampton County elections.

Shortly after the machine errors occurred Northhampton County held an emergency press conference and invited Linda Bennett the Senior Vice President of Customer Operations at Election Systems & Software to explain why votes were switched in the retention race between Judge Jack Panella and Judge Victor Stabile for the Pennsylvania Superior Court.

When asked by an attendee of the press conference why the voting machines had errors Bennett responded “It was a human error, based on someone from our team that programmed the election.”

She continued “They made a mistake putting the printed text on the card as opposed to the screen. … Someone from our team inadvertently put the wrong name.”

It may be time to go back to paper ballots hand-counted at the precinct level.

 

One Way To Fight Voter Fraud

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On Friday, One America News reported that some election battleground states are taking steps to avoid voter fraud in next year’s election. Obviously there are a number of types of voter fraud. Some states have passed laws requiring a photo identification to prove that voters are who they say they are. The current efforts are to combat electronic fraud.

The article reports:

A leg of the Department of Homeland Security recently announced its soon to be partnership with election officials and non-profit VotingWorks that would audit votes in 2020. Ballot box officers say the purpose is to prevent possible hacks and watch for faulty voting machines.

Battleground states, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, have already embraced a voter monitoring tool known as Arlo. Four other states have reportedly adopted the tool as well. The VotingWorks sponsored tool is free for state and local election leaders, and would double-check all votes cast.

Arlo is a web-based app that uses a security method called “risk-limiting audit.” During this process, a small percentage of the paper ballots are taken at random to check if they match what the machines recorded. Although the method is simple, many places don’t use them reportedly because many states use direct electronic voting machines, which eradicates all paper trails.

This is a really good idea. We need to make sure our elections are honest. Voter fraud is a problem. Various voter integrity groups have found multiple examples of illegal registrations in various states in recent years. Voter identity requirements and spot audits are ways to assure Americans that their votes count and are not being cancelled out by illegal votes or electronic shenanigans.

Paper Ballots Might Be A Good Idea

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Yesterday The Hill reported that state officials in Mississippi have confirmed at least three reports of voting machines in two counties changing voters’ picks in the GOP gubernatorial primary runoff.

The article reports:

Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves are currently in a runoff for the Republican nomination in the governor’s race to see who will take on Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood in the November general election. Reeves led Waller in the Aug. 6 balloting by a 49-33 margin, though the race went to a runoff after no candidate hit 50 percent.

The issues emerged Tuesday morning, with one Facebook user posting a video showing a touch-screen voting machine changing their selection from Waller to Reeves.

“It is not letting me vote for who I want to vote for,” the voter says in the video. “How can that happen?” a woman in the background asks.

…Two other machines in Calhoun County exhibited the same issue of switching voters’ selection from Waller to Reeves, circuit clerk Carlton Baker told the Ledger.

All three machines in question are of the same model.

“We’re doing what we can to rectify the situation,” Baker said.

Voting machines that change votes need to be gone by 2020. It might be the right time to go back to paper ballots.

Securing Our Elections

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted a story about voting in the Netherlands.

The article reports:

Mickey Kaus notes that the Netherlands is going to go back to conducting its elections with paper ballots. “Dutch go old school against Russian hacking,” he notes, linking to a Politico Europe story. Kaus adds an appropriate shout-out to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who has been calling for paper ballots for years.

Going back to paper ballots may strike many people, as it used to strike me, as retrograde. Isn’t it a lot faster to count electronic votes? Isn’t there a danger that paper ballots can be altered, defaced, and burned? Isn’t electronic voting cooler and more up to date?

As I have stated before, technical things mystify me. However, it does seem to me that having a paper record to verify voting totals is a good idea. It may not be necessary to go back to counting paper ballots by hand if we can scan them by machine and have the physical ballots to verify the totals.

The article concludes:

The fact is that sacrificing a bit of speed for reliability is probably a good trade. The strongest argument for paper ballots is that they can’t be hacked. The second strongest is that there is an independent record of each ballot cast, which some computerized systems lack.

It may take a long time to count ballots in some states where they include many offices and ballot propositions, but people can wait. And recounts of paper ballots can result in disputes over hanging chads and the like, but these are difficulties our republic has been handling for over 200 years. My vote is for paper ballots.

Good idea.