As facts, testimony, photographs, videos and admissions roll in, it is clear that voting machines across the land were compromised by groups and individuals who were not part of the relevant state or local official election staff. After the GOP dominated Arizona Senate authorized an untested, outside auditing firm, “Cyber Ninjas” (left above), to take possession of Maricopa Country voting machines as part of an audit (which ultimately revealed no material discrepancies) of the November 2020 election, Maricopa County determined that the machines were so compromised that they could never against be used in an election. They were forced to spend millions of dollars to replace them.
“On Jan. 7, 2021, a group of forensics experts working for lawyers allied with President Donald Trump spent eight hours at a county elections office in southern Georgia, copying sensitive software and data from its voting machines. [second picture]” Washington Post, September 20th. These facts are supported by sworn testimony, in a civil action, from a GOP official who witnessed the above event. “After the Georgia breach, a group of election security experts said the unauthorized copying and sharing of election data from rural Coffee County presented ‘serious threats’ to the November election. They urged the state election board to replace the touchscreen devices used throughout the state and use only hand-marked paper ballots.
“Harri Hursti, a leading expert in voting security, is concerned about another possibility: Access to the voting equipment data or software could be used to develop a realistic-looking video in which someone falsely claims to have manipulated a voting system, he said… Such a video posted online or to social media on or after election day could create chaos for election officials and prompt voters to challenge the accuracy of the results.” Associated Press, September 19th.
On-air, right-wing personalities, from Fox News, Newsmax and One America News to former President Donald Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and allies like Mike “Pillowman” Liddell, face huge defamation lawsuits from manufacturers for claiming their voting machines were controlled by Biden-friendly manipulators (even though those machines had no connection to the outside world, by Internet or otherwise). Despite a few retractions, the damage to these manufacturers was done. They lost contracts to provide machines to governments all over the world.
The mounting evidence of tampering, illegal “inspections” and software downloads of voting machines by GOP “officials” claiming a right to access those machines in various voting districts have created a nightmare scenario for local bona fide election officials. Machines and software so accessed has rendered the “inspected” voting machines unusable… and has negatively impacted the value of the relevant voting machine manufacturers. If you are looking to red state legislatures to fix the problem, it will be an uphill battle. Election officials are just doing it alone.
40% of the GOP candidates running for office during the upcoming mid-terms are election deniers. Some running to govern their state and local election operations have pretty much vowed that no Democrat would ever win locally. Election denier, Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, claimed that the state’s voting machines were not secure, even after she won the August 3rd primary.
The suspicion cast on our election process is obviously unwarranted, at least as to those voting machines that GOP deniers have not gotten unauthorized access to. “There is no evidence that voting machines have been manipulated, either in the 2020 election or in this year’s primaries… The stakes appeared to rise last week [mid-September] with the news of a federal investigation involving a prominent loyalist to former President Trump who has been promoting voting machine conspiracy theories across the country… Though much remains unknown about the investigations, one of the most pressing questions is what the breaches could mean for the security of voting machines in the midterm elections, less than two months away.
“Election security experts say the breaches by themselves have not necessarily increased threats to the November voting. Election officials already assume hostile foreign governments might have the sensitive data, so they take precautions to protect their voting systems.
“The more immediate concern is the possibility that rogue election workers, including those sympathetic to the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, might use their access to election equipment and the knowledge gained through the breaches to launch attacks from within. Such attacks could be used to give their candidates or party an advantage, or to introduce system problems that would sow further distrust in election results.
“In some of the suspected security breaches, authorities are investigating whether local officials provided unauthorized access to people who copied software and hard drive data, and in several cases shared it publicly.” Associated Press. GOP candidates across the country have stated that if they do not win, they will not accept the results. Seriously, we have a big problem.
I’m Peter Dekom, and once the orderly transition of presidential power from a former administration to a victorious new administration is resisted, which had never before happened in US history, how long will it be before the entire election process completely unravels, creating chaos and autocracy as our new political system?
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