@RantingRooster
They will say that Open Source exposes the vulnerabilities. Yes! It should! So they can be protected. A few thousand pairs of eyes (dare I hope for tens of thousands?) will find more errors than a small cabal at some closed source shop.
Hardened Linux is Open Source. Sunlight shows all blemishes. Rot festers in shadows.

I have only 1 small quibble with Bennie's statement about checking the audit log.

The audit log it's self, is "programmed" to output what is placed (written) to the audit log, so it would be simple enough to "game" the audit log as well. Audit logs are not just a blanket dump of data, unless programmed that way. Make sense?

As a general design principle, there should be no "percent" of any vote. One can not vote 1/2 a percent for anyone, you either vote for them or not. Meaning there should be no "fraction" of a vote, period. Any "fraction" of a vote, should be a HUGE red flag something is not right with the "system".

Every information processing "system" is (supposed to be) comprised of 5 basic components, input, out, processing, controls and feedback.

Audit logs are a form of "feedback" that lets one know what the system is up to and whether it is functioning properly, if one programmed it that way. Without the ability to verify / check the source code, we'll never know, and argue till hell freezes over. I completely and totally agree with Bennie that the source code should be open source and available for inspection.

If NASA and the military require source code audits, we can, and should, require source code audit our election systems.

@snoopydawg of the Empire. They were totally powerless, just maintaining the Illusion of a republic and SPQR.

This was THE safest election in history. In forever! The nasty Russians did not try to get Trump re-elected or to stop Biden. The intelligence agencies are very proud of themselves for stopping the evil Putin from rigging it. However, Obama has spilled the beans on Israel. He stated unequivocally that if you don’t cowtow to Israel then you can’t get into congress or be re-elected. At the state and federal levels. I’m not sure how many of you are surprised by this, but for Obama to say it was groovy because it’s not really a secret.

But then it doesn’t matter who you vote for or who wins because nothing changes for the better for most of us and the wars continue no matter what. The only thing that changes is the CEO of the country because the people who really run the country are not elected. They are appointed by the various think tanks, organizations and political action groups. The FBI, CIA, DHS, ICE and other agencies continue doing whatever the hell they want. Congress no longer makes law. They either let lobbyists write them or the Supreme Court weighs in and decides that what we want doesn’t matter and puts corporate profits over human rights.

@Lookout

Rigging the programs for scan machines is not as easy as you seem to think it is. Here's what needs to happen:

First you steal a USB key for the voting machines. Your need to create or steal an active supervisory account on the machine. Then you must physically access (requirement to insert the USB key, plus you need steal a traditional key to unlock the access door) each individual machine. Now you need to get past security and election office employees. Once you ninja into the office, unlock the access door, and insert your stolen USB key, there are several more steps. You need to compile the revised executable somehow, keeping in mind there's no compiler on the voting machine. You need to forge the security certificate necessary to install the executable files in the appropriate protected directories. You have to spoof the MD5 hash in the manifest file or create a new manifest file with the correct hash. And you'll likely need a good hacker tool that lets you thwart the antivirus software and built-in operating system security.

Then you need to do the same thing in 5,000 election centers. On 40,000 voting machines. In 28 different Republican and Democratic states. With internal and/or external IT staffs that thoroughly test the voting machines before they are used. And with paper ballots that can be manually recounted like in Georgia, thus showing any vote tampering.

to create the illusion of democracy in a corporate oligarchy.

Even with paper mail in ballots (which is to me the most sensible) the programs for the scan machines can be rigged in the same way you describe above.

Funny that Venezuela and Bolivia have better more transparent elections... the very countries we criticize for rigged elections.

PS I think your analysis of the coming Biden administration is dead on.

@Blue Republic

The Q Code contains the ballot number. It cannot be run multiple times because each ballot number is deactivated after it is counted.

My daughter lived in GA for years and told me what a disaster the election system is there. I was sceptical but now think she was just scratching the surface.

Here's PBS News Hour on GA's voting system, their cyber security experts panning it - this about 10 days *before* the General Election.

Note: although the voter gets a printout that supposedly records how they voted, what is actually recorded is information on the Q-code that is also printed. But there is no way for the voter to tell that the Q-code actually reflects what the human-readable printout says, and apparently nothing to prevent a copied Q-code from being run through the scanner and counted multiple times...

GA voting system starts at about 34:00

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBvJVrp1SZ4]

Lots of allegations of what appear to be unfolded (hence not mailed) mail-in ballots all or nearly all for Biden reported by observers there, including several Democrats.

The accounts below are part of a lawsuit filed the other day by attorney Lin Wood against Georgia election officials. Original article is here - has direct links to the affidavits of the witnesses:

An observer at the Cobb County Poll Precinct, who is a Democrat and licensed paralegal, noted how she observed poll workers counting the ballots in silence, not verifying the names aloud.

Additionally, she described unusual sets of ballots similar to those described by the poll manager. In sworn testimony, she said that “hundreds of these ballots seemed impeccable, with no folds or creases. The bubble selections were perfectly made (all within the circle), only observed sections in black ink, and all happened to be selections for Biden.”

This observer also stated that “signatures were not being verified” and there “were no corresponding envelopes seen in site.” She concluded her sworn statement by noting, “I believe there was fraud committed in the presidential election and question the validity of the Georgia recount process.”

Another poll observer, a Democrat and Florida trial lawyer, traveled as an observer to the Dekalb County Poll Precinct. In his sworn statement, this observer noticed ballots with two distinct characteristics: “they all had a perfect black bubble and all were Biden select.” The observer stated that as workers went through the ballots, Biden’s name was called “over 500 times in a row.”

The following day, this same observer went to the Cobb County Poll Precinct where he again noted the same ballot characteristics: “they were all for Biden and had the same perfect black bubble.”

The observer stated that he saw “absentee ballots for Trump inserted into Biden’s stack and were counted as Biden votes.” He stated that during three days spent in Atlanta, “not once did anyone verify signatures on these ballots.”

The observer concluded his testimony by stating: “in the counties that I have observed, there is widespread fraud favoring candidate Biden only. There were thousands of ballots that just had the perfect bubble marked for Biden and no markings in the rest of the ballot.”

Another witness, an election recount monitor at the Georgia World Congress Center, stated that he observed “large quantities of ballots being cast for Joe Biden on ballots that did not appear to have been mailed.” As he stated, “there were no creases in the mail-in ballots giving the impression that they were never folded into an envelope and mailed.”

In particular, this recount monitor stated that these ballots “appeared to be pre-printed with the selections already made.” He noted that “hundreds of ballots at a time were counted for Biden only.”

Boxes of Ballots for Biden, Zero for Trump
Another certified Fulton County recount observer stated that during their observation process, “many of the boxes of ballots had voted 100% for Biden and 0% for Trump.” Similar to other observers, this one stated that the “ballots appeared to be perfectly filled out as if they were pre-printed with the presidential candidate selected.”

This observer stated that they, along with other observers, were disturbed enough to write down “which batch headers and box number ranges were suspicious” and went so far as to create a spreadsheet with a listing of the batch numbers.

A handwritten note on the side of the spreadsheet states, “All questionable ballots. Looked machine stamped. 95-100% Biden for most of them.”

Another election official auditor at the Georgia World Congress Center stated in a sworn statement that she observed the same pristine condition of ballots, noting the “absentee ballots looked as though they had just come from a fresh stack. I could not observe any creases in the ballots and did not seem like they were ever folded and put into envelopes or mailed out.”

Like the other observers, these ballots contained “perfectly bubbled markings for Biden.”

Not to pick on Georgia unduly, but geeze...