Check out SMART Elections & SMART Legislation.

We have two nonpartisan orgs working to make U.S. elections secure, fair, accessible, well-administered & publicly verifiable.

SMART Elections is focusing on nonpartisan election observation to monitor, protect & verify the vote. Join our vibrant and fascinating monthly forums!

At SMART Legislation we author & advocate for legislation to protect elections.

We are building bridges and lasting partnerships that can produce significant improvements in U.S, elections. Our elections must be both inclusive and transparent to be meaningful and trustworthy.

We focus especially on election security because that is our area of expertise, and we know that if security is not addressed - and votes are not counted accurately - then all other reforms are at risk.

SMART stands for:

• Secure

• Marked* & Audited by Hand

• Accessible & Accurate

• Registration for all eligible voters

• Transparent

*(for those who are able) 

Please make a donation today to so we can continue this critically important work.

Widely Used Optical Scan Voting Machine Can Be Hacked in 1 Minute

Following the 2nd annual DEF CON Hacking Voting Village I released an investigative expose demonstrating that a widely-used optical scan voting machine called the ES&S M650 was vulnerable from multiple attack vectors. This machine is used in 24 states to count votes and can be hacked to change election results in under one minute. The report has received close to 1/2 a million views.

CREDIT:  Producer, Camera, Editor

Machine usage according to Verified Voting.
©2018 Shugah Works

Ballots Destroyed in Canova/Wasserman Shultz Race

We have released the full investigative report into the 2016 Florida congressional primary race between Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova. The report will shock you. Their are close to a thousand ballots more than voters who voted, and the original ballots have been destroyed. Election experts I consulted said that the results of the race are suspect; and county election officials may be subject to criminal prosecution.

Here is an excerpt:

"... in a hearing in Broward County Florida, last month, a year-long battle to view the ballots in the race between Wasserman Schultz and Canova came to a head with a surprising admission by the Broward County Supervisor of Elections’ office. In violation of both federal and state statutes that require federal election materials be preserved for 22 months, their office destroyed the ballots from the Wasserman Schultz/Canova race after only 12 months. Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes personally signed off on the ballots’ destruction.

... Months of investigating the Supervisor’s office and analyzing election data reveal that in the vast majority of precincts in the race, the number of cast ballots does not match the number of voters who voted.

The discrepancies are large and all over the map. Some precincts show 10 – 20 more cast ballots than voters. In one precinct alone, M030, there are 24 more cast ballots than voters.  Other precincts are missing ballots. Less than 10% of the precincts have the same number of cast ballots as voters; and in all the precincts combined, there are more than a thousand discrepancies. Election experts and administrators who reviewed the data were shocked and concerned."

Full data here
Please donate to support this research. We need your help to continue this work.

Thanks for all the encouragement I've received during this investigation. Please do read the full article and share the link with your networks!

Canova / Wasserman Schultz Handcount

I am re-posting the link to the statistical research that I did on the results of the August 30th 2016 primary between Tim Canova and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. 

Tim Canova is running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz again for a seat in congress.

After almost a year of protracted and contentious negotiations with the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office, we have finally gained permission to copy the ballots in 12 precincts of the 2016 primary race between Canova and Wasserman Schultz. We had to take them to court in order to do this. We now have 2 days assigned, November 1st & 2nd when we will have permission to make copies of the ballots. After that we will count them by hand.

The statistical analysis of this race raised red flags, and it is important that we look at races like this to see if the results are accurate. The only way to know is to count the ballots by hand. If you believe this is important work, please support this project. We need your financial help to get this done. Please give as much as you can today. Here is the Gofundme link where you can contribute.

Wasserman Schultz has been embroiled in a series of scandals this year.

2 Tier Approach to Election Audits

Robust audits are the single most useful tool we can use to ensure the accuracy and security of our elections. I have written a proposal for a realistic approach to implement audits in as many counties as quickly as possible. The basic concept is to do 100% hand-count audits in places where it will not be burdensome, such as smaller jurisdictions, and those with simpler ballots. In larger jurisdictions, and those with more complex ballot content, risk limiting audits can be implemented; but it would be advisable to additionally audit one randomly drawn race on every ballot, and all races closer than 1 % with 100% hand-count audits.

I have presented this paper at 3 conferences now. The Electoral Integrity Project Workshop in San Francisco in August, The People's Convergence Conference in September, and the Take Back the Vote Conference this past weekend in Berkeley. The response has been very positive.

Below is a link to the complete paper. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

If you support the work that I'm doing, please show that support by making a donation to my GoFundMe today. I very much need your help right now in order to continue.  Thank you to everyone who has donated so far, and thank you for the work that you are doing to move this issue forward! 

Click on the photo to read or download the complete paper.

Troubling Questions Raised About Voting Machinery in Georgia Special Election

The results from Georgia’s sixth district congressional race are odd.

Jon Ossoff, the Democratic newcomer who ran against Republican former Secretary of State Karen Handel, won the absentee vote 64% to 36%. That vote was conducted on paper ballots that were mailed in and scanned on optical scanners. Ossoff also won the early voting 51% to 49%. Those results closely mirror recent polls that had him ahead by 1-3 points. In the highest of those polls, he was ahead by 7% with 5% undecided and a 4% margin of error. 

On Election Day, Handel pulled out a whopping 16 percent lead, for a crushing 58% to 42% division of the day’s votes. That means that all 5% of the undecided voters broke for Handel, the poll was off by its farthest estimate and another 3.5% of Ossoff’s voters switched sides into her camp. All this despite Ossoff’s intensive door-to-door ground offensive that Garland Favorito, who lives in the heart of the sixth district called the "most massive operation” he’s ever seen. Favorito is the founder of VoterGA, a nonpartisan election reform group. He said Handel had signs up, but her canvassing operation didn't approach Ossoff's.

Michael McDonald, the political science professor who runs the United States Elections Project, expressed no surprise at the results, and seemed to indicate it was because of high Republican turnout. He tweeted a graph of early voting results, showing Republican turnout beating Democratic turnout by a ratio of 5 to 3. That is impressive turnout, but even with those numbers Ossoff won the early voting returns. So it would seem that many of the independents voted for him, and possibly some of the Republicans crossed over.

Unlike the absentee voters who filled out paper ballots, Election Day voters in Georgia used touchscreen machines that have no verifiable paper trail. These specific machines, the Accuvote TS, are susceptible to hacking, and in fact were hacked on national television in 2006 by computer scientists from Princeton. Professor Ed Felten also demonstrated the hack before Congress, testifying that their program could “silently transfer votes from one candidate to another,” and that “launching it requires access to a single voting machine for as little as one minute.”

Not only were the machines hacked 10 years ago, with no known patch put in place to protect them from that vulnerability, the entire Georgia election systems website was penetrated in August 2016 by security researcher Logan Lamb.

“It was on the wide-open internet,” Lamb said in a recent phone interview. Lamb was able to download passwords, instructions to election workers and databases used to prepare the ballots and tabulate votes. He easily downloaded all of this as part of 16 gigs of sensitive Georgia election data that was left completely unprotected on the internet for months. Asked what level of expertise was required, he replied, “little to none.”

Read More...

Georgia Lawsuit Tries to Stop Use of Touchscreen Machines in Special Election

Yesterday two Georgia voters who are in leadership positions with Georgians for Verified Voting and an election reform non-profit filed a lawsuit against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and election directors of the three counties making up Georgia's 6th Congressional District. They are seeking a preliminary injunction against the use of touchscreen voting machines in the upcoming special election on June 20th. Early voting is scheduled to begin in 4 days on May 30th. They will be filing a motion for a temporary restraining order this morning. Marilyn Marks, Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Foundation, the organization spearheading the lawsuit, said in a late-night phone interview that they were anticipating a hearing this afternoon.

Documents filed in the lawsuit claim that the machines have numerous safety and accuracy concerns including:

- A breach in the security of the Center for Election Systems that was investigated by the FBI

- An encryption key that was released onto the internet

- The Possibility of a corrupt database

- A demonstration model of the voting machine in use was hacked and infected with vote stealing software by a security team, and no evidence has been provided that the known security flaw was repaired.

- The inability of the system to identify the introduction of improper data

- Inadequate physical security for the machines

- The system not appearing to meet fundamental standards for federal certification

- The system being 15 years old and relying on a non-industrial strength database

- Two letters from sixteen prominent computer scientists expressing that they were, "profoundly concerned about the security of Georgia’s votes."

According to the suit, Georgia law requires that officials be able to demonstrate that voting machines can be safely and accurately used, and that if reexamination shows that not to be the case - then the approval of the system "shall immediately be revoked by the Secretary of State; and no such system shall thereafter ... be used in this state."

The suit further states that the remedy under Georgia law if the machines cannot be used is to use hand-counted paper ballots. Virginia Martin, an election official in Columbia County, New York, where paper ballots and hand counting are used, said, "I believe that Georgia could run its special election on paper ballots ... Despite the length of time involved, the benefit of having auditable paper records, given the election problems the state has recently experienced, should be very appealing ... For election boards that don’t currently conduct hand counts, this is an easy election to begin on. Counters could be recruited over the next weeks and trained. Unforeseen wrinkles in the process could be discovered during a mock count, which would show both recruits and staff what to expect. The ballot’s simplicity makes it perfect for a hand count, just like in recent European elections." 

All Eyes on Georgia Special Election Today

Will Jon Ossoff turn a Republican district blue by winning 50% or more of the votes in this Congressional race? Or will he have to face a run-off that consolidates the Republican vote against him? Will the race be an indicator that Democrats can flip the House in 2018? Or another nail in their coffin showing how out of touch with electoral politics they have really become - and that they can no longer motivate Black voters, even with Robocalls from Samuel Jackson.

Do not be bothered by the fact that some voting machines were stolen. The Election Director assures us that the data "is hard to access."

"Cobb County Elections Director Janine Eveler said information on the machines is “hard to access,” adding that they cannot be used to fraudulently vote in Tuesday’s election."

I personally feel so much better knowing that - because data being hard to access always deters hackers. 

Meanwhile the NY Times lays out what to watch for, without ever bothering to mention that Georgia votes on completely electronic voting machines with no paper trail - so there is literally no way to check if the votes are accurate.

This Letter to the Editor by Richard DeMillo, Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Professor of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, also points out that the organization responsible for Georgia's elections is under investigation by the FBI after a security breach last week.

"A special department at Kennesaw State University, under contract to the Secretary of State’s office, maintains and programs the machines, along with the electronic poll books, for the entire state for each election. While details are still unclear, the FBI launched a criminal investigation last week after the KSU department was breached. Even if the voting systems were not harmed by the breach, the technology of the machines is insecure, making them susceptible to malfunction and error. With no paper trail, there is no way to validate the outcome of an election independently."

As Mr. DeMillo points out,

"Georgia should conduct all future elections using voter-marked paper ballots. These can be counted by ballot scanners and, most importantly, audited by hand. To ensure confidence, Georgia voters deserve a secure auditable system, such as is used by most of the rest of the country, and a strong manual post-election ballot audit law."

What to investigate?

Here is where I am today on evidence of Russian involvement in our elections; what is a valuable use of time; and what is less so.

- There is a lot of evidence that Donald Trump has been doing business with individuals associated with the Russian mob and money laundering.
"...for more than three decades the FBI has had Trump Tower in its sights. Many of its occupants have been targets of major investigations ... One thing many of them have in common is deep ties to organized crime — including the Russian mafia."

- The Clintons seem to have compromised themselves by donations from Russia and various business associates surrounding a uranium deal with Russia.

Why many progressives are more interested in the Clintons' ties to Russia than Trump's ties I don't understand.

Louise Mensch apparently says that Russia is connected to everything. So eventually, with any luck, she may be right about something. Could be Trump.

All of this for me, is a distraction from the real issue, which is how are we going to establish accurate, secure election protocols by the 2018 mid-term elections. Anyone can hack our elections right now: The Russians, Iran, China, Karl Rove, The DNC. Alex Halderman has said straight up that he could do it, probably most of his grad students and the girls from black girls code could as well. It is infinitely more fascinating to speculate on who may have been doing it than to do the nitty-gritty, tedious work of how to prevent it. Yet, that is where we need to put our attention. We have an incredibly narrow window in which to do this work before it will simply be too late to make changes to voting sytems prior to the election. Already Chicago and Maricopa County AZ are in the process of making these decisions.

There are a number of really important areas that need to be researched. If people are interested in assisting with this research - it would be really useful!

1) We need an excel sheet of the laws pertaining to how ballots are counted in each state.  Many states have outlawed hand-counting and we need to know which ones, and what the specific regulations are in each state. Someone could start this in a google spread sheet, and others could add in information. 

2) We need to research about 7 different emerging voting technologies that are coming on the market. I support hand-counted paper ballots in as many places as possible. Probably that will be in jurisdictions with on average 50,000 votes or less — and not too many referendums on the ballot. Other locales are going to need some kind of mechanism, and it would be good to compare emerging technologies and see which ones offer the most transparency and ability to verify the vote. 

Someone could start a google spread sheet and begin listing the parameters that can be compared for each system. This would be tremendously helpful! We can crowd-source this research and get it done more quickly and more thoroughly than anyone could do it on their own. If we can get a spreadsheet in place with basic information and websites of each option — we can take this to a team of computer scientists and ask for more in-depth vetting of the systems. 

If you start a spread sheet, please lmk via my website or DM and I will send you an email to add me. Here are the systems that I am aware of currently. 

o   Clear Ballot – Mark Earley &  Ion Sancho may be a source of information on this company

o   Clear Ballot has partnered with Voatz – (supporting internet voting- quite risky)

o   Galois

o   Jim Keller’s system (photographer/inventor from San Antonio Texas)

o   STAR – Travis County election officials & Rice Univ

o   Mitch Trachtenberg / Humboldt County system

o   TOBI – The open ballot initiative - Ray Lutz, Citizens’ Oversight Projects

o   Trust the Vote – Open Source – but available for commercial development

o   Some jurisdictions may be developing their own systems- LA & San Francisco are

o   A simple off the shelf system that would scan or photograph ballots that could then be counted via spreadsheets, in a system developed by the Michigan Election Reform Alliance, or a slide show method that has been developed by the Wisconsin Election Integrity Action Team, or another protocol.

Thoughts? Willing to help? Please let me know!!

Shaping a Platform

We're going to have another conference call on Sunday. We will be sharing ideas about the best way to enact an #HonestElections platform that includes transparent, secure, accurate and fair elections. 

Please join us. Guests on the call will include:

Philip Stark - associate dean of mathematical and physical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley; board of advisers of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. He has called for a risk-limiting audit of the election.

Victoria Collier  - National Election Defense Coalition

Jared Beck - attorney for JamPac, which is pursuing a class action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee.

Laura Pressley, Ph.D. - 2014 candidate for Austin TX city council. There is a great news piece here about the discrepancies in her election results, the corruption errors in the computer audit logs and the election laws that the Texas Secretary of State is violating.

Niko House - activist

A suggested platform for #HonestElections for discussion:

10 STEPS TOWARD ELECTION REFORM

1)    IMPARTIAL ELECTORAL INSTITUTIONS

2)   TRANSPARENT PUBLIC COUNTING OF THE VOTES; POSSIBLE REFORMS INCLUDE:

- REPLACE VOTING MACHINES WITH VOTER-MARKED, HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS

- OR DO BOTH MACHINE COUNTS & 100% HAND COUNTS

- ACCESS TO BALLOT IMAGES

- PHOTOGRAPH BALLOTS PUBLICLY AND ITEMIZE BALLOTS ONLINE

3)   WHERE MACHINE ARE IN USE - VOTER-MARKED PAPER BALLOTS, REAL SECURITY & MEANINGFUL AUDITS

4)   UNIVERSAL VOTER REGISTRATION

5)   PUBLIC FINANCING OF CAMPAIGNS

6)  CIVICS GRADES 3 - 12 [Emphasize participation and Multiple Points of View]

7)   3RD PARTY DEBATE & BALLOT ACCESS

8)  MODIFY THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

9)  RESTORE VOTING RIGHTS TO EX-FELONS

  10) MANDATE ISSUE-BASED COVERAGE ON NETWORKS

Building Momentum

We had a great conference call today with about 50 people on the line. Our focus is on making our elections accurate, secure, transparent & fair. I'm having these calls so that organizers can connect with each other and activists who want to get involved can find a group to work with. This was today's call. Information about who was on the call and how to reach them is below

View fullsize

We will have another call or live stream at the same time next Sunday at 3pm. 

Next week's call will feature:

Laura Pressley who has been working on cleaning up elections in Texas

Don Ford - documentary filmmaker What's Next

Today's speakers included: 

Tim Canova - Progress For All
Carl J. Romanelli - Pennsylvania Green Party
John Brakey -  Election Nightmares
Ray Lutz  - Citizens' Oversight Projects
Jim Duffett - National Election Defense Coalition

facilitated by lulu Fries'dat - Electoral System in Crisis

At Electoral System in Crisis we need people with math, research and data entry skills  - please let us know if that's you - by entering your email here:  Holler Back - [not] Voting in an American Town. Please also enter your email if you'd like to just stay in touch or know about upcoming calls and events.

I will send an email with how to contact organizers directly.

Emily Levy from Elections at Risk says they are creating a list of projects that people can volunteer for. If you need help, send her information about your project: info @ electionsatrisk dot org.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated!! Take action now. Please put any comments or questions you had from the call into the comments. Thanks again!