Not published in an American newspaper, of course: privately owned voting machines

[MadLinguist]

Most of use DUers have been aware of all the problems with electronic voting machines for a very long time, but there are new issues, and more deliberate obfuscation efforts underway now than ever before. It's always been a mystery to me why the topic is all but taboo within the US media. The trusty Guardian has a very good, and very alarming piece out, entitled 'They think they are above the law': the firms that own America's voting system

Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin is a newcomer to the cause of reforming America’s vote-counting machines, welcomed through baptism by fire. In 2015, Maryland’s main election system vendor was bought by a parent company with ties to a Russian oligarch. The state’s election officials did not know about the purchase until July 2018, when the FBI notified them of the potential conflict.

The FBI investigated and did not find any evidence of tampering or sharing of voter data. But the incident was a giant red flag as to the potential vulnerabilities of American democracy – especially as many states have outsourced vote-counting to the private sector. After all, the purchase happened while Russian agents were mounting multiple disinformation and cybersecurity campaigns to interfere with America’s 2016 general election.

“To say that they don’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing is not to say that nothing untoward happened,” Raskin said. “It’s simply to say that we don’t have the evidence of it.”

The fact is that democracy in the United States is now largely a secretive and privately-run affair conducted out of the public eye with little oversight. The corporations that run every aspect of American elections, from voter registration to casting and counting votes by machine, are subject to limited state and federal regulation.

The companies are privately-owned and closely held, making information about ownership and financial stability difficult to obtain. The software source code and hardware design of their systems are kept as trade secrets and therefore difficult to study or investigate.

Really worth the rest of the read:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/22/us-voting-machine-private-companies-voter-registration

[Arkansas Granny]

1. Hmm. I wonder who would invest in voting machines. 😒 Surely not Ivanka, right?

Ivanka Trump’s latest trademarks in China include voting machines, sausage casings
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/06/ivanka-trumps-latest-trademarks-in-china-include-voting-machines-sausage-casings/amp/

[pazzyanne]

6. That was my first thought as well.

Privately owned voting machines is anti-American IMHO!

[lostnfound]

12. Russian oligarchs pop up everywhere, now voting systems. Lovely. Nt

[watoos]

2. Another voting machine article that doesn't tell the whole story,

Republicans or foreigners own our voting machines, that's terrible of course.

Here's the deal about there being no evidence that machines were tampered with. First of all the machines can be pre-programmed to flip votes to Republicans, there doesn't have to be any hacking.
Second, the reason that there is no evidence that machines were tampered with is because none of the machines are ever pulled out and independently audited. The owners of the machines claim proprietary rights for their software. The owners of the machines don't allow an independent software programmer to check a machine even if someone who voted saw their vote flipped to someone else. What I understand that happens, in the best case scenario the vote flipping machine is pulled out, in the worse case scenario it is pulled out for an hour and then put back in service.

I vote on machines in Pa. where we have no paper trail, not that it would matter if we did.

Exit polling used to be an excellent check on fair elections, now with voting machines all of a sudden we are to disregard exit polling as unreliable.

Voting doesn't matter, who counts the votes matters.

[Lonestarblue]

4. The programming is the problem.

In the 2004 election, the CEO of Diebold assured Ohio Republicans that he would see that Bush won the state—and he did. There was an investigation, but Bush kept the state. In my opinion, this is how Republicans took over so many statehouses and were then able to gerrymander districts to ensure their continued winning. I have believed for years that the voting machines can be programmed not only to flip votes but to aggregate totals by using different formulas for Republicans that reward them more votes; e.g., 1.05% for Republicans and 0.95% for Democrats. We have an uphill battle in 2020.

[watoos]

7. Yes, but there is a lot more involved in the Ohio vote rigging.

If I remember correctly, and I am 71 so my short term memory isn't as good as my long term memory, the machine programmer was set to testify about rigging of the Ohio voting machines when his small plane crashed and he was killed. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes, we can overcome the rigged machines if we win by big margins, but don't put it past Republicans to up the % of flipped votes.

[SharonAnn]

14. You're right.

[MadLinguist]

5. Actually, the article DOES tell that story.

It was not within the part quoted in the OP, true enough. The main message of the story is that the private ownership of the vote counting and voter registration technology has entirely and effectively blocked any sort of oversight or regulation, let alone transparency, and the degree to which republicans are wedded to this state of affairs. There were details in there that I hadn't come across before, even though I follow this issue with the zealotry of the well-justified paranoiac. For instance, Brian Kemp, former Georgia Secretary of State and current governor, appointed an ES&S lobbyist as his deputy chief of staff after being 'elected' to the governorship. And I didn't know that Virginia moved to paper ballots after the 2017 Defcon hacking contest report.
https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-25/DEF%20CON%2025%20voting%20village%20report.pdf

[watoos]

8. I apologize for not reading the link.

[FakeNoose]

3. K & R Ho-lee sh*t!

From the OP:

Both Robert Mueller’s report and a previous indictment of 12 Russian agents confirmed Russians also targeted private vendors that provided election software. The Russians successfully breached at least one company, its name redacted in the reports, “and installed malware on the company network”, according to the Mueller report.

[watoos]

9. I have no doubt that machines in 2016 were either

hacked or pre-programmed to flip votes for Trump.

Democrats need to raise holy hell about these crooked voting machines. People shed blood sweat and tears campaigning for Democratic candidates and then see them cheated out of winning. It's no wonder that Democrats get demoralized. The DNC needs to step it up, Perez needs to step it up. Make elections fair again.

We need to push for paper ballots or voting by mail.

[ehrnst]

11. I think it was more hacking into the voter rolls and altering Democratic voter records there.

It's way, way easier to do that than try to hack into individual voting machines, when you can just turn them away at the registration desk and make it a hassle for them to get a provisional ballot verified.

A friend who lives in Phoenix said that hundreds of people got their registration status moved from "Democrat" to "unaffiliated" in her precinct, rendering them ineligible to vote in the Democratic primary.

Another friend in Scottsdale said that many hispanic neighbors got notifications to go to the wrong polling place to vote, even though he, who has a very european first and last name, got the correct information. T

here were many polling places that closed, leading to long lines at the remaining ones where once many hispanic voters finally got to the desk, they were told they were at the wrong polling place. There are ways to add hurdles to voting that will discourage those who are not gung ho to vote for a candidate that's been trashed with propaganda.

[Farmer-Rick]

10. So Russian corporations and the top RepubliCON 0.7% own our votes

So, do we have any form of democracy? And what chance do we have of overwhelming the cheat machine in 2020?

This is the terminal stage of capitalism. It's where democracy is canabalised by the uber rich of American wealthy and exists only in theory.

Just remember, our American oligarchy, people like the Waltons, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and the Koch bros, picked Trump to represent them. He was their choice, their representative for America. If Bezos or Larry Page or Sergey Brin didn't WANT Trump representing the most powerful nation on earth, he would Not be there. He would be gone. Our richest 0.7% wanted Trump as president. This is how they run things. This is their vision of our country.

[appalachiablue]

13. Glad you posted this Guardian series, I saw it then dropped the

ball. More coverage is needed of this troubling issue menacing our democracy for some time.

I never see, or don't notice much discussion of this strange issue. However 'gerrymandering' which is well known, is brought up quite a lot.