There is no evidence because things were designed to make it very hard to find evidence. I wrote this a year and a bit ago - https://accordingtohoyt.com/2023/06/23/dominion-voting-machines-insecure-by-design-by-francis-turner/ . To the best of my knowledge this has been an ongoing problem for a quarter century. Voting machines are black boxes and the storage, programming and deployment of them to polling stations leaves numerous opportunities for people to interfere with them. Have they done so? I don't know and (as I wrote in the link) it seems like design choices are made that make such interference harder to detect than it ought to be.
I also pay attention to the Defcon/blackhat voting machine hacking challenges and the way that the US continues to use voting methods (e.g. postal votes) that other nations, such as the UK, experimented with and stopped because the fraud was too high. BTW the problem with postal voting is not that the votes are fraudulent per se it is that someone can force other people to vote the way they want them to. The votes counted will be correct, the choices made by some of the voters will not be genuine but have been coerced.
The vast majority of Americans live and vote in jurisdictions that primarily use hand-marked paper ballots, according to data from Verified Voting, an organization that tracks voting technology. And as you said yourself, you don't know whether there was interference with them. That does not mean election fraud, even IF these machines are designed to make interference harder to detect.
The number of Americans who live in jurisdictions that primarily use direct recording electronic (DRE) machines, computers that store votes in memory? 7 percent. Seven. Even IF every single person who voted using those machines voted for Trump and their vote changed to Biden via interference, it wouldn't have been enough to change the results of the elections.
An independent state analysis in Antrim County, MI, debunked a memo claiming that the Dominion Voting System is "intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results."
Look, I'm the very first person to complain about digital voting machines. (Literally. I was the first person to speak on digital voting machines at DEF CON.) However, they're overwhelmingly not used any more. When they are used, they're usually confined to niches like ballot-marking devices for voters who have various physical disabilities that would otherwise keep them from voting. The overall goal is physical marks on paper ballots that are counted by machines that physically lack network hardware, with counts that are written in ink on rolls of paper. These are then reviewed by precinct officials, copied to official records, and then delivered -- along with the ballots -- to a central station.
At the central counting facility, one of the first things that's done is to apply Benford's law to the vote tallies. Do they look weird? Yes? Call in the nerds. No? Go on to the Risk-Limiting Audit (RLA). Take a statistically significant random sample of the (marked paper) ballots and count them. From that, figure out what the vote outcome statistically should be, with what deviations on which sides. Does the final count align with the RLA's predictions? No? Call in the nerds.
I agree that black boxes are to be avoided. But let's not pretend it's easy to tamper with vote counts, either. Not so long as we're putting marks on paper.
"BTW the problem with postal voting is not that the votes are fraudulent per se it is that someone can force other people to vote the way they want them to."
That's true. But voting in a precinct has the same problem, thanks to ballot selfies. In fact, most people in domestic abuse situations will vote the way their abuser demands _even if they know the abuser will never find out._ I concur that this is a problem, but you're absolutely off-base to say it's uniquely a problem with postal ballots.
I think it's kind of odd that you use the UK as an example of someone doing it right. The UK doesn't have a secret ballot at all, not the way we'd consider it. There, a voter signs in and is issued a ballot. The ballot's serial number is associated with the voter and kept in a ledger. That ledger is a closely-guarded secret and may only be lawfully opened by court order, but the UK really wants the ability to pierce the anonymity of the ballot if there are court challenges. (This was true as of seven years ago. I haven't done a serious dive into UK election law since then.)
Umm. No.
There is no evidence because things were designed to make it very hard to find evidence. I wrote this a year and a bit ago - https://accordingtohoyt.com/2023/06/23/dominion-voting-machines-insecure-by-design-by-francis-turner/ . To the best of my knowledge this has been an ongoing problem for a quarter century. Voting machines are black boxes and the storage, programming and deployment of them to polling stations leaves numerous opportunities for people to interfere with them. Have they done so? I don't know and (as I wrote in the link) it seems like design choices are made that make such interference harder to detect than it ought to be.
I also pay attention to the Defcon/blackhat voting machine hacking challenges and the way that the US continues to use voting methods (e.g. postal votes) that other nations, such as the UK, experimented with and stopped because the fraud was too high. BTW the problem with postal voting is not that the votes are fraudulent per se it is that someone can force other people to vote the way they want them to. The votes counted will be correct, the choices made by some of the voters will not be genuine but have been coerced.
US voting is a lot less secure than it need be
The vast majority of Americans live and vote in jurisdictions that primarily use hand-marked paper ballots, according to data from Verified Voting, an organization that tracks voting technology. And as you said yourself, you don't know whether there was interference with them. That does not mean election fraud, even IF these machines are designed to make interference harder to detect.
The number of Americans who live in jurisdictions that primarily use direct recording electronic (DRE) machines, computers that store votes in memory? 7 percent. Seven. Even IF every single person who voted using those machines voted for Trump and their vote changed to Biden via interference, it wouldn't have been enough to change the results of the elections.
An independent state analysis in Antrim County, MI, debunked a memo claiming that the Dominion Voting System is "intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results."
https://ftt-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/29140718/Antrim.pdf
Yes, improvements can be made. And I listed them here. But to claim that there was widespread election fraud? Nope.
In addition, this is a logical fallacy. There was no evidence because it's hard to find. Nope. Sorry.
Hi. I'm the expert Nicki cited.
"Umm, no."
Well, yes.
Look, I'm the very first person to complain about digital voting machines. (Literally. I was the first person to speak on digital voting machines at DEF CON.) However, they're overwhelmingly not used any more. When they are used, they're usually confined to niches like ballot-marking devices for voters who have various physical disabilities that would otherwise keep them from voting. The overall goal is physical marks on paper ballots that are counted by machines that physically lack network hardware, with counts that are written in ink on rolls of paper. These are then reviewed by precinct officials, copied to official records, and then delivered -- along with the ballots -- to a central station.
At the central counting facility, one of the first things that's done is to apply Benford's law to the vote tallies. Do they look weird? Yes? Call in the nerds. No? Go on to the Risk-Limiting Audit (RLA). Take a statistically significant random sample of the (marked paper) ballots and count them. From that, figure out what the vote outcome statistically should be, with what deviations on which sides. Does the final count align with the RLA's predictions? No? Call in the nerds.
I agree that black boxes are to be avoided. But let's not pretend it's easy to tamper with vote counts, either. Not so long as we're putting marks on paper.
"BTW the problem with postal voting is not that the votes are fraudulent per se it is that someone can force other people to vote the way they want them to."
That's true. But voting in a precinct has the same problem, thanks to ballot selfies. In fact, most people in domestic abuse situations will vote the way their abuser demands _even if they know the abuser will never find out._ I concur that this is a problem, but you're absolutely off-base to say it's uniquely a problem with postal ballots.
I think it's kind of odd that you use the UK as an example of someone doing it right. The UK doesn't have a secret ballot at all, not the way we'd consider it. There, a voter signs in and is issued a ballot. The ballot's serial number is associated with the voter and kept in a ledger. That ledger is a closely-guarded secret and may only be lawfully opened by court order, but the UK really wants the ability to pierce the anonymity of the ballot if there are court challenges. (This was true as of seven years ago. I haven't done a serious dive into UK election law since then.)