Leaked voting machine BIOS passwords may implicate Q-friendly county clerk
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
However, I like two simple arguments for paper ballots: low skilled people theoretically could still verify, so it seems more democratic. And changing / replacing millions of papers doesn't seem to scale as well as a hacker changing codes.
I don't know how we begin to restore confidence and protect our Democracy when each of us live in radically different <i>un</i>realities.
https://c.files.bbci.co.uk/A4F1/production/_115252224_gettyi...
Followed by articles like this:
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
And blocking audits like this:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arizona-audit-election-subpoena...
I agree, give everyone paper. Count by hand. Then scan into machine. Every ballot should have a secret code they can then use to see their ballot online.
Really don't see why they wouldn't keep out a mass of protesters mid count? If they were doing it in a completely unmonitored room you might have a point.
If you read the article on “fortifying the election for the proper outcome” they straight up say why they do this.
The general point isn’t what you or I know or believe. That image doesn’t spread any confidence. In a democracy, all citizens need to trust an election to allow for a peaceful transition of power. Basically, everyone has to be like, “okay, fine my guy lost”
To accomplish that anyone should be able to observe and inspect or its not a democracy. One party doesn’t feel they can observe and knows they can’t inspect the results
Paper ballots are extremely hard to hack given the scale of the operation. Because it would involve people. The more people involved to more chances one gets discovered or comes out with the truth.
I have no issues using both simultaneously for near instant results as long as paper count is there to verify the results.
I wouldn't trust anyone who subscribes to the QAnon lunacy to tie their own shoes.
1. According to the clerk, these passwords are only held by the Secretary of State (or Dominion techs) (not sure how legit that is).
2. The Secretary of State then raided the office of the clerk (with dominion techs, supposedly) while they traveled to the Cyber Symposium.
2. At the Cyber Symposium claim to have imaged the machines with someone on the ground in IT and the clerks help. These images were brought to the Cyber Symposium today.
3. Ron Watkins and others spent today reviewing the image by VPNing into a machine where the read-only image was hosted.
Timestamps of analysis 1:57:00 - 3:51:00
https://rumble.com/vl05im-watch-mike-lindells-cyber-symposiu...
Personally, I have no idea what to make of any of it, but it does appear like some weird stuff was on there. Particularly 3:29:00 - 3:35:00 they discuss a batch file which seems to do something ominous sounding, but without seeing the image no idea.
Only thing I take away from this, we need to just count paper ballots. Potentially, keep images as backups.
Not nearly the same, but back in school, we were able to real havoc with some rouge batch files that were included in the image used in every machine. In our case though, one happened to contained credentials for an AD account with admin privileges.
They do actually pull that up, though the resolution here is too poor. In the live stream on lindelltv.com it was clear. They actually discuss what it does as well
However, there is a definite potential of adverse impacts on election integrity either if the machine configuration is tampered with prior to the election or the totalized results are tampered with and the state lacks a sufficiently rigorous auditing program (which unfortunately many do). For that reason it's considered a best practice to keep the EMS under strict control. Disconnected from the internet in a locked area under Sheriff's guard is a common approach. Of course there are almost certainly counties out there that do not take any precautions.
The EMS is basically just a Windows application that runs on servers in the county clerk's office, but the servers are provided on a lease basis by Dominion. So it's no surprise that Dominion sends out this basic documentation on post-installation configuration of the servers. These passwords and documents are not related to the actual "voting machines," markers and tabulators, which run on more bespoke hardware with a much more unusual security model.
All of that being said, I would love to know what the end goal was here. This (along with other things connected to the symposium) could be linked to massive security breaches if they're legitimate. I hope this was worth it to them.
Use paper ballots
It's boring but it works. Lots of places do this successfully. You don't need different software, you need to stop using software.
Blockchain considers secure private key management outside of its threat model which is crazy when you think about it.
The best argument I think I could make in favour of using paper over any electronic voting system is the scalability of an attack.
Generally speaking changing one vote in an electronic system is just as easy as changing a million. Scaling a physical attack against paper ballots is much harder and actually increases the likelihood of getting caught.
Also for blockchain in particular. It solves no problem existing mixed trust voting systems already solve more efficiently.
It's clear, relatively secure, auditable, verifiable, and somewhat anonymous.
For those unfamiliar:
> The idea is that you xor together 3 ballots when you vote, but one of the three ballots is published.[3]
> The trick to the 3-ballot voting protocol is that not everyone can validate their vote. However, when a group of voters band together, they should be able to validate that a subset of their votes (1/3) were registered with high probability. > ... > With a sufficiently large group of voters checking results, the law of large numbers comes into play and they can statistically detect the presence of voting fraud.[4]
You would still need to trust that the poll worker is tabulating correctly and working randomly, though that's an assumption that we're already making as it is.
Scantegrity[5], Prêt à Voter[6], Helios[7], and Punchscan[8] also seem promising, though I'm not as familiar with them.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreeBallot
[1]: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv06c.pdf
[2]: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/RS07.pdf
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20554744
[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16598777
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prêt_à_Voter
At 11:30 he starts to actually talk about which vendors have VDPs.
Eventually makes it to ES&S and Dominion having good policies, and also being the bulk of voting systems in use.
And reaching the end, this is a focused video about disclosure programs, with no content about whether or what vulnerabilities have been found, how the companies responded, etc. So maybe not all that relevant.
While I'm sceptical of claims that there was widespread fraud, the fact that there's so much pushback against just counting and verifying the integrity of the ballots is pretty insane. There's zero stakes if everything was fair, and even if it wasn't there's no legal mechanism to remove Biden from office.
If you think this is evidence of a secure election, I have an unpickable lock to sell you. Anyone repeating the talking point that this was “the most secure election ever” sounds like a partisan hypocrite, especially when you can find videos of Democratic Congress members warning about the security of elections as recently as in 2017.
Or, maybe it’s a coincidence that polls asking questions about election security – an objectively non-partisan topic – find a distribution of opinions weirdly aligned with support for the red or blue team.
Alas, anonymous verifiable signatures must be impossible.
Mail-in ballots are no different. A limited, known number are printed. The system prioritizes in-person ballots in case the mailed one is filled out under pressure. Some states forbid unique ballot tracking, using theoretically non-unique identifiers.
Note that the map colors DRE w/ voter verifiable paper audit trail as (lightish) red. That's consistent with the prevailing opinion today that DRE w/ VVPAT is inferior to paper ballots with precinct tabulation (because voters do not necessarily actually examine the VVPAT), but does tend to make the current situation look worse than it is due to Nevada.
If you mean Arizona, see Title 16:
> After the canvass has been completed, the officer in charge of elections shall deposit the package or envelope containing the ballots in a secure facility managed by the county treasurer, who shall keep it unopened and unaltered for twenty-four months for elections for a federal office or for six months for all other elections, at which time he shall destroy it without opening or examining the contents.
> The officer in charge of elections shall ensure that electronic data from and electronic or digital images of ballots are protected from physical and electronic access, including unauthorized copying or transfer, and that all security measures are at least as protective as those prescribed for paper ballots.
I believe some states completely hand recounted the entire millions of receipts from the machines this year (in response to the allegations of voter fraud). However, it shouldn't be necessary to exhaustively recount the entire race. We should be able to use random sampling to statistically verify that the race is not fixed.
But we can set the confidence we want and test enough ballots to get there. In this past election, some states decided it was "100% sure to this kind of detectable attack" and they hand counted every ballot.
The fact that one side has not prioritized this isn't similar to the other side's repeated attempts to overthrow our government.
We don’t even need security – we need confidence. And this recent idea that it takes weeks to count votes, that we might not know the results for weeks – is completely unacceptable and is already doing irreparable damage to people’s faith in elections.
* "They" meaning the news media. The official vote took longer and counted the mail in ballots
Why on earth would that be? The "counting period" was originally set at 5 weeks. Between laws saying that you cannot start counting mail in ballots before the close of polls on election day, laws that (rightly) limit how many hours that can be spent counting ballots, etc. I'm not sure how to square that with instant results.
Maybe we just be patient counting the scores in a contest that takes 18 months to run?
But, even if you ignore that two individuals (or three) representing all the candidates each count by hand a stack of ten, have to agree, sign off that they agree, etc. I think you underestimate other problems. You're focused on the counting.
Just consider how long it takes to open the outer envelope, check the signature on the inner envelope (again, by multiple people who represent different campaigns), and physically remove and unfold that sheet of paper. Now multiply by several million. Add in some extra time for managing stack of ten ballots.
Or, to put it another way, we don't vote with a phone app. We are willing to pay extra for security.
Let's say it takes a minute to process a single ballot. That means a single poll worker can go through a couple hundred ballots--500 is a nice round number-- a day. And all of this is going to be processed generally at a centralized facility at county level, and because of the pandemic, you might have 500,000 of those to get through. Even with 100 workers working those ballots, that's still going to take 10 days to get through everything.
I really suspect you’re being intentionally difficult here, this is not such a simple problem as you suggest.
And I honestly don’t even know who you’re talking about but I assume it’s the pillow/pcap guy.
Have you heard about the president’s son, or the New York governor, or the speaker of the house who moonlights as a prolific stock trader?
Good people are not leading us.
Your other whataboutisms are weak sauce compared with this. In particular the Cuomo one is not good for you, he's out, while your party continues to embrace the p**y grabber that has a higher harassment allegation count.
Just want to point out that Trump doesn't lead the GOP.
https://www.businessinsider.com/rnc-chair-ronna-mcdaniel-tru...
As do the parade of GOP officials and wannabes that have made the trek to Mar-a-lago to kiss the ring. As do the many state GOP parties that are expelling anyone not sufficiently loyal and conducting crazy "audits" to show fealty to Trump's election lies.
Are you talking about Russia or the Federalist Society SCOTUS picks or the rioters who were let in by the few security guards remaining after the Capitol security was lowered or the Big Tech services that should be declared as political donations but aren't?
* USPS sabotage and state-level voter suppression measures in urban areas leading up to the 2020 election
* Post-election soft coup attempt via the courts (including having broken precedent to rush a SCOTUS appointment during the election, which could have changed the outcome of the coup attempt in a different timeline)
* 1/6
* Ongoing propagation of the "big lie" and scheming to overturn the election (https://news.yahoo.com/bizarre-seven-point-plan-reinstate-14...), alongside continuing implementation of state-level voter suppression measures and gerrymandering
This is implying that default mail-in voting was a way to get Democrats elected in the first place. (which it was given how mail-in voting was the source of the Democrats advance when they arrived)
> Post-election soft coup attempt via the courts
Challenging elections integrity in the courts are what insure the process is transparent and followed in the first place. This makes no sense by definition. Just because a SCOTUS nominee was nominated just before doesn't change anything and is still entirely within the Constitution. Because Democrats got unlucky on the retirement / death draw during this presidency doesn't mean a "coup". And by the way, it happened before.
> 1/6
Not a coup by any stretch of the imagination (no weapons) and barely a riot given the lack of destruction and violence. Also why leave out how security was reduced, that the FBI had informants and that Trump even proposed to increase security?
> Ongoing propagation of the "big lie"
I get it that you are not familiar with Bush v. Gore and how it was the big rig for years?
> and scheming to overturn the election (https://news.yahoo.com/bizarre-seven-point-plan-reinstate-14...)
It's easy to pick a random clown in a camp and then zoom 1000x to paint a bad picture:
"The cards, featuring a seven-point plan, appear to have been made by a group called Patriots Soar, which is not connected to the organisers of CPAC"
> alongside continuing implementation of state-level voter suppression measures and gerrymandering
Gerrymandering happens in blue districts too by the way, can can only do so much (elections results still mostly 50/50 percentage wise). And the "voter suppression" are a joke when you read the details of them since the measures being implemented are the same that are found in Canada (showing ID with proof of your address, registering to vote, having a reason to vote by mail, which used to be a Democrat talking point during the Bush/Obama years by the way).
No it isn't. Don't be obtuse.
Challenging elections integrity in the courts are what insure the process is transparent and followed in the first place.
Filing dozens of frivolous lawsuits and aggressively pressuring state government officials to help overturn election results isn't normal.
Democrats got unlucky on the retirement / death draw
https://www.npr.org/sections/death-of-ruth-bader-ginsburg/20...
[1/6 was] not a coup by any stretch of the imagination (no weapons)
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters...
I get it that you are not familiar with Bush v. Gore
Yup, this is the first I've heard of George Bush and Al Gore. Thanks for letting me know about them.
It's easy to pick a random clown in a camp and then zoom 1000x to paint a bad picture
Sure. I agree with that. I'm not claiming that this is the official platform of the GOP, simply that it's a radical and dangerous element of society that Trump and his wing of the party are actively cultivating by continuing to promote lies.
And the "voter suppression" are a joke
Sure. They didn't work in the end, but they made it a lot closer than it would have been. The new ones may work or they may not, but we shouldn't tolerate any voter suppression in America.
showing ID with proof of your address
No one is opposed to requiring an ID to vote. The For the People Act included a voter ID provision, with alternative documents such as utility bills allowable as a fallback.
If you want to require IDs without that fallback, how about we make federal voting IDs available to everyone in the country at no cost and with minimal hassle or time investment? If the intent isn't voter suppression, this should be perfectly agreeable.
> No it isn't. Don't be obtuse.
Do you have more to say than "don't be obtuse"? Because it was well known that Democrats were more likely to use mail-in voting from the beginning as various polls showed and how the vote turned out Democrats as more and more mail-in votes were counted.
> Filing dozens of frivolous lawsuits and aggressively pressuring state government officials to help overturn election results isn't normal.
"Frivolous" is your opinion, not the one of the courts. And by the way multiple cases have been thrown out during Bush v. Gore, were they "frivolous" too?
> Democrats got unlucky on the retirement / death draw
> https://www.npr.org/sections/death-of-ruth-bader-ginsburg/20...
Can you actually verbalize the point you're trying to make without simply linking an opinion piece from NPR?
> [1/6 was] not a coup by any stretch of the imagination (no weapons)
> https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters...
"Many of the weapons allegedly used in the riot are considered "less lethal" but are dangerous and can even be fatal, according to experts."
Again, nothing lethal enough to start an "insurrection" against armed guards.
> I get it that you are not familiar with Bush v. Gore
> Yup, this is the first I've heard of George Bush and Al Gore. Thanks for letting me know about them.
So you you know that challenging elections results and irregularities in the courts are part of the electoral process then.
> It's easy to pick a random clown in a camp and then zoom 1000x to paint a bad picture
> Sure. I agree with that. I'm not claiming that this is the official platform of the GOP, simply that it's a radical and dangerous element of society that Trump and his wing of the party are actively cultivating by continuing to promote lies.
Trump never said things that are outside of what are heard at political rallies. Things like "fighting" for a cause and "walking on X building" are fairly common.
> No one is opposed to requiring an ID to vote.
This is not true. Democrats and various pressure group have opposed it for decades now:
https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/873878423/voting-and-election...
> The For the People Act included a voter ID provision, with alternative documents such as utility bills allowable as a fallback.
Bills are not id, they're proof of address. In Canada for example (and in most other liberal democracies), we have to show an id with a picture and a proof of address (the election card or a hydro bill if it's missing).
> No one is opposed to requiring an ID to vote. The For the People Act included a voter ID provision, with alternative documents such as utility bills allowable as a fallback.
> If you want to require IDs without that fallback, how about we make federal voting IDs available to everyone in the country at no cost and with minimal hassle or time investment? If the intent isn't voter suppression, this should be perfectly agreeable.
I'm sure this would get bi-partisan support, especially amongst the moderates. Social security numbers were never meant to be IDs in the first place and they are clearly out of date now.
Both have, in my view, reasonable arguments on why they feel that way.
Try to zoom out and look at your comment from the 3rd person view. The right believes the left stole an election (coup), they believe they have evidence to prove it. The left saw Jan 6 on the corporate news and believes they have the evidence to prove Trump attempted to seize government.
Note, none of the people charged for Jan 6 was for sedition. So the evidence really isn't there either.
If you take a step back and try to see both perspectives, perhaps it's possible to relate again.
On the right, we have:
* USPS sabotage and state-level voter suppression measures in urban areas leading up to the 2020 election
* Post-election soft coup attempt via the courts (including having broken precedent to rush a SCOTUS appointment during the election, which could have changed the outcome of the coup attempt in a different timeline)
* 1/6
* Ongoing propagation of the "big lie" and scheming to overturn the election (https://news.yahoo.com/bizarre-seven-point-plan-reinstate-14...), alongside continuing implementation of state-level voter suppression measures and gerrymandering
And the left has:
* Failed to advocate for open source voting systems (which isn't a widely known or politically relevant issue on either side at present)
* Pushed for stronger voting rights and increased voter participation — both uncontroversially positive properties of a democracy, but also happen to benefit the Democratic Party at the current moment
* Proposed measures in the For the People Act that were arguably overly ambitious or aggressive in the current political environment, such as stricter campaign finance regulations, which were promptly renegotiated within their own party ranks
To frame these as comparable is borderline gaslighting.
Every day I switch between msnbc, nbc, warroom.org, breaking points, Ben Shapiro and Tim pool. Probably ~6-8hrs a day I listen to content at double speed (while doing other stuff).
Every single one has their own take, but just to get you up-to-date with what the right believes:
* BLM and Antifa caused billions in damages. Harassing or attacking everyone who disagreed with ideology (they were coming to senators homes)
* in some places this is leading to the reintroduction of segregation https://atlantablackstar.com/2021/08/10/it-was-just-disbelie...
* FBI spied on trump on Clinton and Obama’s behalf. Utilizing a known fabricated document (fabricated to keep business with the Clinton foundation - see uranium one): https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
* election laws were changed last minute, broken among other things to effect a coup and they brag about it: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
* more people voted in 2020 than were registered in 2016 or 2018. With a 93% then out rate.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273743/number-of-registe...
* here’s a couple video explaining some of their concerns about the election
https://rumble.com/vkyxju-retired-u.s.-army-colonel-phil-wal...
https://rumble.com/vkyzgb-mike-lindell-cyber-symposium-dr.-d...
The list goes on and on...
It is indeed.
You sound arrogant, “only one side is correct and it’s my side”
I have very little patience for dishonesty. If that makes me seem "arrogant" to peddlers of disinformation, so be it.
BLM and Antifa caused billions in damages
Sure. That was terrible and uncalled for. Lots of bad ideas and movements come from the grassroots left, like "Defund the Police" and "All Cops are Bastards". I don't recall this being sanctioned or incited by Joe Biden or the Democratic Party, and it wasn't a coup d'etat.
in some places this is leading to the reintroduction of segregation
I didn't see where your source made a connection between these events. Either way, if you think that a racist principal imposing segregation in their school somehow vindicates right-wing insurrectionists, I don't know what to tell you.
FBI spied on trump on Clinton and Obama’s behalf. Utilizing a known fabricated document
This is an article about two British citizens independently making a decision to attempt to influence our election in a small way. I find that objectionable for the same reason as Russia's larger-scale election interference, but I don't see how it relates to the conspiracy theory of Obama spying on Trump.
election laws were changed last minute, broken among other things to effect a coup and they brag about it
Can you be more specific? All I'm seeing from an initial pass is that an effort was made to respond to right-wing voter suppression efforts and disinformation leading up to the election.
more people voted in 2020 than were registered in 2016 or 2018. With a 93% then out rate.
That was pretty cool. I'm not sure what you're suggesting it has to do with right-wing beliefs.
here’s a couple video explaining some of their concerns about the election
Sure, I'm aware that Trump and his allies claim to have concerns. That's what we're discussing here. Do you have more specific points and sources that aren't videos?
I agree with the thrust of your argument, but for exactly the opposite of the state's you mentioned.
https://ballotpedia.org/Changes_to_election_dates,_procedure...
https://www.maricopa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/70435/Final-Sig...
what, if anything, would a router show at this point in time. Do these routers use store logs that would still be accessible?
Are they trying to find some rhetorical bamboo in the switch (trying to be funny though those beliefs definitely are not in my book...)?
That said, the EMS is usually a small half-rack setup and I'd be surprised for there to be a router at all. Often it's a single machine. The vendors usually tell you to either never connect it to outside networks, or to do so only for setup and disconnect it before you start election preparation. Most, usually all, in-election connectivity to the machines is via sneakernet.
Any kind of detailed network logging becomes a big undertaking at organizational scale, so it's very unlikely that there are any kind of useful persistent traffic logs on the routers. Any such logs would have been kept on a dedicated system like a netflow collector or SIEM, the routers don't have the storage (or storage write endurance). The fact the senate didn't subpoena for such a system suggests it doesn't exist, which is unsurprising. Mass-retention of network traffic logs is a sufficiently expensive and complex thing that not a lot of organizations do it.
That was my guess on logs. Really cool to learn more!
You sound like you work in the industry. I'm sorry for that ;( Recent WaPo article on election workers was scary.
There isn't, you can actually see their EMS diagram here: https://recorder.maricopa.gov/justthefacts/pdf/Maricopa%20EM...
(Switches yes, but no routers)
https://recorder.maricopa.gov/justthefacts/pdf/Maricopa%20EM...
It shows the EMS rack and the ballot scanners in a network configuration.
Since this seems to be windows based from a video I've seen. At least the software they were using to adjudicate votes. Source: https://rumble.com/vbqj0b-dominon-voting-machines-walkthroug...
I expect the EMS rack have a network port and not a wifi port. Back when I was using windows, connecting to the internet through the network port required a setup step, for things like DHCP server for the dynamic ip. I'm curious, does windows remember the configurations it has used in the past? And does windows keep a log file of the network connections it makes, and how often are those logs rotated typically?
But you can see they use a Netgear switch, so we don't even know if it's managed but I'd guess it's not because Netgear's managed line just isn't that popular. There's probably nothing of interest that could be extracted from that switch.
Yes, as far as I know all of Dominion's management software is Windows-based. There's a potentially huge amount of forensic data available from the Windows machines but whether or not you could demonstrate internet access just depends. It's the kind of thing you could probably only prove in the positive. Windows does not keep network logs per se, just there are lots of other logs that can be used to infer certain network activity. The reality is that network traffic is so high volume and low value that it's unusual for anything to record it in much detail, it'd just eat a lot of storage and I/O to never get looked at.
The subpoena requested "all routers used in connection with the November 3, 2020 general election"; so I guess it could arguably cover routers outside of the EMS.
That said:
#1 It's unlikely that the AZ senate has the votes to hold the county in contempt at this point (the audit has only gotten less popular over time).
#2 They want to avoid handing them over for security / privacy reasons (they've mentioned a few times the sheriff's department has concerns -- nothing concrete but c'mon who among us would be happy to hand over a ton of info about an intranet we're in charge of).
To put this all in context: the county took a much more aggressive position against the audit after the audit twitter account accused them of deleting a DB file to hide evidence and the AZ senate was about to drag them into a hearing they planned to broadcast on OAN. In particular the county has done an incredible job of countering misinformation with facts on their twitter account.
Also since the states run their own elections and the Senate had broad oversight rights, the judge so far has ruled against the county at every step. The county is just delaying things really.
This is a bit confusing because there was a judge who decided the senate's first subpoena was valid [1], but that too was still a senate subpoena.
They certainly could try to go to court to get an enforceable subpoena, if they do I'll make some popcorn.
As for the routers my current position towards the AZ auditors is "put up or shut up". If the EMS really was connected to an external network then they must have some event logs somewhere showing an unexplainable MAC address or something; if they don't then asking for unrelated routers just feels like a fishing expedition.
[1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021...
But you know .. "whatever" reason.
a) the election-tabulating machines were never connected to the internet
b) we've already given you (well, the cybersecurity experts you hired) enough information to prove it
c) we have had two other audits that agree with us that they were never connected
d) actually complying with your order presents severe privacy and security risks
e) it also is a very severe operational router, since the senate was essentially asking for physical custody of all county routers, which would presumably include things like the routing to the county website to cross-reference real estate deeds or the like
But sure, let's ignore their actual claims as to why they didn't do it and imply that they didn't do it because they're afraid of producing culpability of criminal actions.