An Election Integrity Forum was held Sunday, March 19th, featuring Mark Cook, election cybersecurity and forensics expert, IT specialist and software developer. Mark is a highly qualified complex systems and root cause analyst who started writing software at age 10 and developed an early bulletin board search engine at age 13 (pre-internet). Mark has testified before judicial courts and several legislative bodies and has worked on numerous election irregularities cases where cyber fraud was alleged, most notably in Maricopa County, AZ, Mesa, Pueblo and El Paso Counties, Colorado, Washington State, S. Carolina, and Montana. He has also conducted investigations here in Texas and is one of a handful of cybersecurity experts that has conducted a forensic investigation on an electronic voting system. If you missed the forum, a link is provided below to a video of the forum including the audience Q&A. During Mark’s presentation he shows just how vulnerable one of the voting machine systems is by flipping votes using free apps he downloaded from the App Store onto his cell phone. It was shocking to see how easy it is to commit election fraud. After watching the video from this forum, I believe you will agree that we can’t trust electronic voting machines, and shouldn’t have to, and we shouldn’t be spending our taxpayer dollars on buying or leasing this expensive equipment! Sadly, every time our legislators try to make it easier to vote, they actually make it easier to cheat!
An Election Integrity Workshop was then held on Monday, March 20th in the County Commissioners Court. Bob Reeves gave an excellent presentation on how Kerr County handles elections and addresses election security to the extent within their control. Bob and his team do the best they can and are committed to complying with the current law. Of particular note, Bob mentioned that the county spends a significant amount of money on elections each year ($442,446 budgeted this year, 31% of which is payroll related). Bob also mentioned that he would be asking for additional funds in the upcoming budget cycle for next year to purchase new and/or upgrade equipment to ensure compliance with the latest Texas Election Code which stipulates that by 2026 all electronic voting systems must have an auditable paper trail.
I oppose spending additional taxpayer money on voting machines, except for the ADA portable devices required under law. We also know that numerous bills on election integrity are being considered during the current legislative session. If enacted these bills may also change the way in which elections must be run.
Hart InterCivic, who provides all of the electronic voting systems used by Kerr County, sent several representatives to the workshop. Peter Lichtenheld, Sr. VP with Hart InterCivic, gave a presentation on Hart’s voting system and the steps that they take to ensure security. My key takeaway was that they agreed that there was no electronic system that was not susceptible to bad actors and malicious vote manipulation. Peter Lichtenheld stated “Anybody who says something is not hackable is a fool. So, anything can be hacked, right? But it takes access to the thing, knowledge and mostly time to be able to do that”.
Mark Cook then gave a presentation and talked broadly about the election ecosystem and the risks associated with federalizing our elections as opposed to allowing states and counties to decentralize elections down to the precinct level. He demonstrated how many of the electronic voting systems used in the US are manufactured in China. Hart InterCivic, claimed to manufacture their equipment in the USA, but when questioned, admitted that they import their motherboards (the most critical component) from China. Mark pointed out how difficult it is to verify that there is no modem built into the motherboards, especially when the systems are under lock and seal and only accessible to the equipment vendors and their representatives. He also made it clear that it is not necessary to have a modem to gain access to a voting machine and manipulate votes. For example, a ballot having a QR code, could be used to insert malware into a vote counting machine simply upon being scanned into that machine. During the Sunday Forum, Mark informed us that the same company that certifies the two voting systems approved for use in Texas by our Secretary of State, Hart InterCivic and ES&S, also certify the other voting systems used in the US including the Dominion system that was easily hacked and manipulated. A link to the Commissioners Court Workshop is provided below.
For me, to restore trust in our elections, we must eliminate the “black box” voting machines and replace them with something far less susceptible to malware, hacking, or bad actors seeking to commit election fraud. Hand counting sequentially numbered paper ballots in each of our 20 precincts under video camera as proposed by Mark Cook would be the lowest cost option and it would add complete transparency and enable a robust audit trail should any discrepancies appear in any of the counts. It might delay reporting results by a few hours, but that is a small price to pay to ensure accuracy, transparency and trusted results. We would still need some form of portable handheld electronic ADA compliant devices for disabled voters. However, these devises should only be capable of printing a completed ballot, which should then be reviewed and verified by the disabled voter, then placed in a secure locked box just for ballots from disabled voters (different from standard paper ballots). All ballots must remain secured under video cameras until they are hand counted in the precincts after election day voting closes. Some people have suggested the use of dumb scanners that have only single write capability, however cyber security experts have made it clear that any such device would have chips and could be manipulated making them susceptible to fraud.
So, where do we go from here? Mark Cook volunteered to come back and spend a week, if needed, to meet with our staff to come up with recommendations on how best to secure our county’s elections. The county should take him up on that offer, but this time pay his reasonable travel expenses and some kind of fee (up to now, incredibly, he has been traveling all over the country giving his time for free to address what he considers to be a fundamental risk to the future of our country). If you agree with me, then each of you should reach out to the Commissioners Court to bring Mark back to work with us and come up with practical cost-effective solutions to improve our election integrity. Urge the Commissioners and Judge to go back to hand counting sequentially numbered paper ballots. This will save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars every year and ensure the most transparent, accurate and trusted elections possible. Seven other counties in Texas are hand counting paper ballots right now.
There are of course other issues that must be addressed to truly ensure the security, transparency and accuracy of our elections. Reach out to Representative Andrew Murr and Senator Pete Flores and formally request them to pass legislation during this legislative session to minimize election mismanagement and vote manipulation by requiring:
- hand-marked, sequentially numbered paper ballots preprinted on counterfeit-resistant paper, signed by an election judge,
- paper poll books, fixed 30 days before the election period,
- precinct “neighborhood” level voting (no county-wide polling place program),
- tabulation of ballots by hand count at the precinct level,
- verifying vote results with random hand counts and robust audits,
- elimination of the gap between election day and the end of early voting,
- limiting mail-in voting to only those who legitimately need it,
- cleaning and securing our voter rolls ensuring they contain only qualified and eligible citizens,
- eliminating the costly and ineffective ERIC system (Electronic Registration Information Center),
- restoration of felony penalties for fraudulent voting,
- reinstatement of Texas Attorney General’s prosecutorial authority to investigate and prosecute, election and voter fraud,
- prohibition of rank choice voting and any foreign ownership of election processes, data storage, or components,
- county-to-precinct and state-to-county election results verification,
If we don’t have fair elections, we don’t have a Republic…