Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wants state lawmakers to increase the penalties for anyone who tampers or tries to tamper with voting machines in the state.
According to Raffensperger’s office, anyone convicted of attempting to interfere with a voting machine — a felony in Georgia— faces between one and 10 years in prison and a maximum $10,000 penalty.
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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wants state lawmakers to increase the penalties for anyone who tampers or tries to tamper with voting machines in the state.
According to Raffensperger’s office, anyone convicted of attempting to interfere with a voting machine — a felony in Georgia— faces between one and 10 years in prison and a maximum $10,000 penalty.
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The Georgia Republican Party (GAGOP) has released a statement renewing its call to “support voter confidence for all Georgians in our elections” following an expert report evaluating the security of Georgia’s voting equipment.
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Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas wants to borrow $25 million to update the state’s “unreliable” voting machines ahead of the 2024 presidential elections.
In recent testimony before the Legislature’s Committee on Finance, Revenue and Bonding, Thomas said her office is seeking authorization to purchase new ballot tabulators for cities and towns across the state. She said the machines have become “unreliable and unserviceable” with the company that produced them no longer in business.
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The Arizona Senate Election Committee heard testimony Monday from computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis about how susceptible voting machines are to manipulation. Curtis, a Democrat who previously worked as a programmer for NASA, DOD and other defense agencies, famously testified in 2007 to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee about how he programmed voting machines so he could manipulate them without being detected.
His presentation began with a clip of his 2007 testimony to Congress, where he said it only took 100 lines of code to change the results of an election. He said county election officials would not be able to detect it, unless they had access to the source code or could compare the count to the paper ballot count. He showed a second video clip, which compiled statements by prominent Democrats expressing their concerns on how voting machines are hackable.
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Although he has been in office for only a few days, Secretary of State Wes Allen has some legislative priorities in mind for the 2023 session.
During an appearance on Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5 on Thursday, Allen said he hoped to pick on two efforts from a year earlier dealing with paper ballots and the connectivity of voting machines.
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Attorney General Dana Nessel is seeking a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges against nine people who engaged in a “conspiracy” to gain access to voting machines while disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The nine people include some high-profile names, including Trump-endorsed, GOP attorney general candidate Matt DePerno, state Rep. Daire Rendon, R-Lake City, and Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf. The letter says the group convinced local clerks to give access to tabulators that the group took to rented areas in Oakland County, where they printed fake ballots and did other tests.
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A government agency has claimed that voting machines used in at least 16 states by an infamous vendor have software vulnerabilities that could compromise them in future elections.
According to ABC News, the report by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) admitted that the machines, provided by Dominion Voting Systems, are susceptible to hacking if the current vulnerabilities are not addressed. The report details at least nine specific weaknesses and suggests several measures to prevent further exploitation of these flaws.
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Hillsdale County Clerk Marney Kast’s office will run the Nov. 2 election next week in Adams Township after the Michigan Bureau of Elections said Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott failed to comply with legal requirements for election security.
“The voters of Adams Township expect, deserve, and have a right to have their election carried out in accordance with all state and federal laws,” Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a statement. “I am confident that the Hillsdale County Clerk’s office will administer the election in a manner that ensures that it is legal, transparent, and secure.”
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A Pennsylvania court this week issued an opinion allowing litigation attempting to block the use of electronic voting devices in Philadelphia, Northampton and Cumberland counties to proceed.
Commonwealth Court Judge Kevin P. Brobson (R), currently a candidate for Pennsylvania Supreme Court, ruled that two advocacy groups and several state residents have standing to challenge the use of ExpressVote XL systems.
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The Pennsylvania Department of State decertified Fulton County’s voting machines on Wednesday after officials there participated in a third-party audit.
The voluntary probe came at the request of Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) who’s currently spearheading a larger effort to audit machines in Tioga, York and Philadelphia counties amid his ongoing campaign to ferret out fraudulent activity during the past two elections.
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Maricopa County election officials tampered with election records just days before the equipment was delivered to the Arizona Senate for the 2020 election audit, according to the Senate Liaison for the Maricopa County 2020 Forensic Election Audit.
Before the machines were turned over, a directory full of election databases was deleted by an administrator, resulting in spoliation of evidence, the Maricopa County Audit’s official Twitter account alleged in a tweet late Wednesday.
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Republicans in Georgia are asking the state to do away with voting machines in the interest of election security, according to a Wednesday report.
“Georgia’s Republican party is recommending that the state get rid of its new voting machines and replace them with hand-marked paper ballots,” WXIA reported.
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Shortly after initially ruling Sunday that state officials must seize and preserve voting machines and data, a federal judge reportedly changed his mind to clear the way for machines to be reset or wiped.
The second order was issued by Senior Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia Atlanta Division. It came in a civil suit asking Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and others to decertify the election results, protect machines and verify ballot signatures.
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Attorney Sidney Powell delivered on her promise to file massive election fraud lawsuits in Georgia and Michigan. The Georgia lawsuit was the weightier of the two, totaling 104 pages, with the Michigan lawsuit reaching 75 pages. Both lawsuits and all evidence are included on Powell’s legal defense fund website.
Thanksgiving Eve was an action-packed day for Powell – she followed up the presidential pardoning of her client, General Michael Flynn, by filing both lawsuits just before midnight.
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Memory sticks that are used to program Philadelphia voting machines have been stolen along with a worker’s laptop, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The outlet reported that assurances have been made that the thefts from a city warehouse will not impair the integrity of the elections.
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by John Haughey Russian hackers gained access to voter information files in Washington County, a sparsely populated Republican-dominated Panhandle county, where 77 percent of its 11,000 votes cast in the 2016 presidential election went to Donald Trump. The revelation was reported by The Washington Post Thursday night, citing two unnamed officials “with knowledge of the investigation,” who said Washington County was one of the two Florida counties breached by the Russian military spy agency, the GRU, in the days before the November 2016 election. The Washington Post also cites two unnamed Florida sources that the second county the FBI maintains was penetrated by the GRU in 2016 is “a mid-sized county on the East Coast of the state.” The disclosures have further inflamed already angry state officials, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Florida’s congressional delegation, who are demanding the FBI and the Trump Administration be more forthcoming in discussing with them and county election officials what its investigation has uncovered. “The public needs to know which counties were hacked and what steps are being taken to hold the bad actors accountable,” U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Orlando, said during a bipartisan Washington D.C. press conference staged by five of the…
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When Democrat Senator Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) sponsored a bill earlier this year that would provide greater vote security by requiring that before January 1, 2020, electronic voting machines have the capability to create a voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) for each ballot cast and that the VVPATs be preserved as paper ballots, the bill failed to advance because no Republican on the committee seconded the sponsor’s motion on the proposed legislation. Background The issue of election integrity continues to receive attention since the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2017 notified 21 states that were targeted by hackers during the 2016 election, and the 2018 mid-term elections are viewed as targets for Russian interference. In February, it was reported that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, “There should be no doubt that Russia perceives that its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations.” A “Report on Cyber Vulnerabilities in U.S. Election Equipment, Databases and Infrastructure” was an outcome of the 25th annual DEF CON hacker conference held in July 2017 in Las Vegas and, for the first time, featured a…
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Child’s play or a signs of a serious security problem in one of the nation’s swing states? That’s the question confronting Florida election officials who are pushing back against reports that an 11-year-old hacked a replica of the state’s election website. Multiple media outlets over the weekend reported that children at a hacking conference in Las Vegas were able to easily hack into a version of the website that reports election results to the public. An 11-year-old boy got into Florida’s site within 10 minutes, while an 11-year-old girl did it in 15 minutes, according to the organizers of the event called DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village. State officials contend there’s no way that the replica used by hackers is an actual representation of the state’s website. “This was a mock site with likely very few, if any, security measures in place,” said Sarah Revell, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Ken Detzner. “It is not a real-life scenario and it offers a wholly inaccurate representation of the security of Florida’s elections websites, online databases and voting systems that does not take into account the state-of-the-art security measures the Florida Department of State has in place to prevent any possible…
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