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Antrim Michigan Forensics Report Preliminary Summary on Dominion Voting Systems [pdf]

16 points by heshiebee 6y ago

slg 6y ago
There is zero chance this will result in a constructive debate when it is framed as a discussion of the 2020 election because nearly everyone will have a strong bias. The clear answer moving forward is to go with a paper voting system that is easier to verify and audit like countless people in this domain have been recommending for years.
- theptip 6y ago
  > a paper voting system that is easier to verify and audit Couldn't agree more. It's interesting that voter fraud used to be a "left-wing conspiracy theory", given that Cheney had ties to Diebold (e.g. see https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/who-is-counting-your-vote-diebold-and-bush-vs-the-public-interest/ https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/who-is-counting-your-vo...). And prior to this election cycle there was more concern from the Democrats around potential Russian interference with voting machines. Perhaps now we'll have bipartisan support for what should be apolitical and uncontroversial election security initiatives that researchers have been advocating for years, e.g. https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2020/11/26/three-paper-thursday-veni-vidi-vote-y-election-security/ https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2020/11/26/three-paper-t....
arberx 6y ago
Regardless of the irregularities or errors, which are arguably bound to happen, and do happen every election, the question is whether there was enough errors/tampering/irregularities to constitute fraud that would overturn the result. Further, this report highlights one voting system in a couple counties in a battle ground state. A study that would answer the question above, would look at a representative number of counties in every state. Why are we focusing on these states?
- arberx 6y ago
  One thing to also note, this law firm is heavily biased looking at their homepage: https://www.depernolaw.com/ https://www.depernolaw.com/
- salawat 6y ago
  Because those have the highest impact as swing states, and with a 68% alleged error rate, and lack of adjudication logs, in a traceability critical system, which shows significantly altered behavior from previous year's datasets, this is highly alarming from the process integrity point of view. There needs to ne a widening of the net to any other county using the same or a similar system. Eventual winner be damned. The process is what matters, and the integrity based on this report is grossly threatened. Nice of this to only pop up today, and there's a lot of knock-on investigations that'd have to take place as a result to ascertain things. I was vetting the Epoch Times story for credibility, and was looking for whether or not there is an official place if record to lookup the document signed off on by 13th Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer. Anyone got an idea where that could be looked up? I'd not normally go this far to verify, but the consequences are far reaching enough where I'm going all the way back to the official record if at all possible.
  - arberx 6y ago
    You can't rule out error in other counties/states, as they simply haven't been looked at. I'm 100% sure you'll find irregularities in other states/counties as well.
  - salawat 6y ago
    I'm on maximum paranoia on this one, so I'm still looking for some more confirmation given that apparently this court does not use https for their site. http://www.13thcircuitcourt.org/2393/Bailey-v-Antrim-County-2020009238CZ http://www.13thcircuitcourt.org/2393/Bailey-v-Antrim-County-... Any Michiganders among us to vouch for authenticity?
    - salawat 6y ago
      Site seems to check out. State of Michigan's Judiciary staff directory points to it, and the domain has been established since 2009, with regular development and a consistent roster of Judges lining up with other sources. Aside from the horrid lack off https and a .org domain instead of .gov, it seems to check out.
theptip 6y ago
Here's Michigan's summary of what I believe to be the same incident: https://www.michigan.gov/documents/sos/Antrim_Fact_Check_707197_7.pdf https://www.michigan.gov/documents/sos/Antrim_Fact_Check_707... > ... tabulators did not communicate properly with the County’s central election management system software when the county combined and reported unofficial results. Every tabulator recorded ballots correctly but the unofficial reports were erroneous. These errors can always be identified and corrected because every tabulator prints a paper totals tape showing how the ballots for each race were counted. After discovering the error in reporting the unofficial results, the clerk worked diligently to report correct unofficial results by reviewing the printed totals tape on each tabulator and hand-entering the results for each race, for each precinct in the county. TFA takes a fairly conspiratorial tone; > A staggering number of votes required adjudication. This was a 2020 issue not seen in previous election cycles still stored on the server. This is caused by intentional errors in the system. "Intentional errors" are neither defined nor substantiated in this report, which I find a bit suspicious. Hanlon's Razor applies here. However the report does make some explicit claims about vote tallies including a photograph of some pieces of paper that claim to be the paper tallies differing totals; I'd be interested in seeing the government's response to this particular claim. > There were incremental changes throughout the rolls with some significant adjustments between the 2 rolls that were reviewed. This demonstrates conclusively that votes can be and were changed during the second machine count after the software update. That should be impossible especially at such a high percentage to total votes cast. > The Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's statement is false. Our findings show that the tabulator tape totals were significantly altered by utilization of two different program versions, and not just the Dominion Election Management System. This is the opposite of the claim that the Office of the Secretary of State made on its website. The fact that these significant errors were not caught in ballot testing and not caught by the local county clerk shows that there are major inherent built-in vulnerabilities and process flaws in the Dominion Election Management System, and that other townships/precincts and the entire election have been affected It's worth mentioning that for years prior to this election cycle, there were significant concerns raised in security circles around the integrity of voting machines, e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-data-security-expert-fears-u-s-voting-will-be-hacked-11587747159 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-data-security-expert-fear.... So I think that a lot of the points being presented here around general security/hackability of the systems should confirm the priors held by anyone that has a passing interest in information security. However some of the claims around specific anomalies in vote counts require domain expertise which I do not have to contribute.

16 points by heshiebee 6y ago

slg 6y ago

There is zero chance this will result in a constructive debate when it is framed as a discussion of the 2020 election because nearly everyone will have a strong bias. The clear answer moving forward is to go with a paper voting system that is easier to verify and audit like countless people in this domain have been recommending for years.

theptip 6y ago
> a paper voting system that is easier to verify and audit Couldn't agree more. It's interesting that voter fraud used to be a "left-wing conspiracy theory", given that Cheney had ties to Diebold (e.g. see https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/who-is-counting-your-vote-diebold-and-bush-vs-the-public-interest/ https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/who-is-counting-your-vo...). And prior to this election cycle there was more concern from the Democrats around potential Russian interference with voting machines. Perhaps now we'll have bipartisan support for what should be apolitical and uncontroversial election security initiatives that researchers have been advocating for years, e.g. https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2020/11/26/three-paper-thursday-veni-vidi-vote-y-election-security/ https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2020/11/26/three-paper-t....

arberx 6y ago

Regardless of the irregularities or errors, which are arguably bound to happen, and do happen every election, the question is whether there was enough errors/tampering/irregularities to constitute fraud that would overturn the result. Further, this report highlights one voting system in a couple counties in a battle ground state. A study that would answer the question above, would look at a representative number of counties in every state. Why are we focusing on these states?

arberx 6y ago
One thing to also note, this law firm is heavily biased looking at their homepage: https://www.depernolaw.com/ https://www.depernolaw.com/
salawat 6y ago
Because those have the highest impact as swing states, and with a 68% alleged error rate, and lack of adjudication logs, in a traceability critical system, which shows significantly altered behavior from previous year's datasets, this is highly alarming from the process integrity point of view. There needs to ne a widening of the net to any other county using the same or a similar system. Eventual winner be damned. The process is what matters, and the integrity based on this report is grossly threatened. Nice of this to only pop up today, and there's a lot of knock-on investigations that'd have to take place as a result to ascertain things. I was vetting the Epoch Times story for credibility, and was looking for whether or not there is an official place if record to lookup the document signed off on by 13th Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer. Anyone got an idea where that could be looked up? I'd not normally go this far to verify, but the consequences are far reaching enough where I'm going all the way back to the official record if at all possible.
- arberx 6y ago
  You can't rule out error in other counties/states, as they simply haven't been looked at. I'm 100% sure you'll find irregularities in other states/counties as well.
- salawat 6y ago
  I'm on maximum paranoia on this one, so I'm still looking for some more confirmation given that apparently this court does not use https for their site. http://www.13thcircuitcourt.org/2393/Bailey-v-Antrim-County-2020009238CZ http://www.13thcircuitcourt.org/2393/Bailey-v-Antrim-County-... Any Michiganders among us to vouch for authenticity?
  - salawat 6y ago
    Site seems to check out. State of Michigan's Judiciary staff directory points to it, and the domain has been established since 2009, with regular development and a consistent roster of Judges lining up with other sources. Aside from the horrid lack off https and a .org domain instead of .gov, it seems to check out.

theptip 6y ago

Here's Michigan's summary of what I believe to be the same incident: https://www.michigan.gov/documents/sos/Antrim_Fact_Check_707197_7.pdf https://www.michigan.gov/documents/sos/Antrim_Fact_Check_707... > ... tabulators did not communicate properly with the County’s central election management system software when the county combined and reported unofficial results. Every tabulator recorded ballots correctly but the unofficial reports were erroneous. These errors can always be identified and corrected because every tabulator prints a paper totals tape showing how the ballots for each race were counted. After discovering the error in reporting the unofficial results, the clerk worked diligently to report correct unofficial results by reviewing the printed totals tape on each tabulator and hand-entering the results for each race, for each precinct in the county. TFA takes a fairly conspiratorial tone; > A staggering number of votes required adjudication. This was a 2020 issue not seen in previous election cycles still stored on the server. This is caused by intentional errors in the system. "Intentional errors" are neither defined nor substantiated in this report, which I find a bit suspicious. Hanlon's Razor applies here. However the report does make some explicit claims about vote tallies including a photograph of some pieces of paper that claim to be the paper tallies differing totals; I'd be interested in seeing the government's response to this particular claim. > There were incremental changes throughout the rolls with some significant adjustments between the 2 rolls that were reviewed. This demonstrates conclusively that votes can be and were changed during the second machine count after the software update. That should be impossible especially at such a high percentage to total votes cast. > The Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's statement is false. Our findings show that the tabulator tape totals were significantly altered by utilization of two different program versions, and not just the Dominion Election Management System. This is the opposite of the claim that the Office of the Secretary of State made on its website. The fact that these significant errors were not caught in ballot testing and not caught by the local county clerk shows that there are major inherent built-in vulnerabilities and process flaws in the Dominion Election Management System, and that other townships/precincts and the entire election have been affected It's worth mentioning that for years prior to this election cycle, there were significant concerns raised in security circles around the integrity of voting machines, e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-data-security-expert-fears-u-s-voting-will-be-hacked-11587747159 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-data-security-expert-fear.... So I think that a lot of the points being presented here around general security/hackability of the systems should confirm the priors held by anyone that has a passing interest in information security. However some of the claims around specific anomalies in vote counts require domain expertise which I do not have to contribute.