Ya really should read this one if you haven't.

[garybeck]

Full PDF here:
https://freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/letter-to-vp-harris-111324-1.pdf

The point is, it's not just Spoonamore. He's not the only computer security expert sounding the alarm and calling for a recount. There are 9 experts in the field signed on to this letter. FWIW I googled two of the signers and they are real people with the credentials listed.

Copy/pasted below. Sorry the formatting got lost in translation and the footnotes are all in the middle. (the PDF above is formatted correctly):

November 13, 2024
The Honorable Kamala Harris
The White House Office of the Vice President 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20500
Dear Vice President Harris,
We write to alert you to serious election security breaches that have threatened the security and integrity of the 2024 elections, and to identify ways to ensure that the will of the voters is reflected and that voters should have confidence in the result. The most effective manner of doing so is through targeted recounts requested by the candidate. In the light of the breaches we ask that you formally request hand recounts in at least the states of Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. We have no evidence that the outcomes of the elections in those states were actually compromised as a result of the security breaches, and we are not suggesting that they were. But binding risk-limiting audits (RLAs) or hand recounts should be routine for all elections, especially when the stakes are high and the results are close. We believe that, under the current circumstances when massive software breaches are known and documented, recounts are necessary and appropriate to remove all potential doubt and to set an example for security best practices in all elections.
In 2022, records, video camera footage, and deposition testimony produced in a civil case in Georgia1 disclosed that its voting system, used statewide, had been breached over multiple days by operatives hired by attorneys for Donald Trump.2,3 The evidence showed that the operatives made copies of the software
1 No. 17-cv-02989-AT (N.D. Ga. filed Aug. 8, 2017).
2 Emma Brown, Jon Swaine, Aaron C. Davis, Amy Gardner, “Trump-allied lawyers pursued voting machine data in multiple states, records reveal,” The Washington Post, (August 15, 2022). Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/08/15/sidney-powell-coffee-county-sullivan-strickler/
3 Kate Brumback, “Video fills in details on alleged Ga. election system breach,” The Associated Press, (September 6, 2022). Available at: https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-technology-donald-trump-voting-92c0ace71d7bee6151dd33938688371e
2
that runs all of the equipment in Georgia, and certain other states, and shared it with other Trump allies and operatives.4
Subsequent court filings and public records requests revealed that the breaches in Georgia were part of a larger effort to take copies of voting system software from systems in Michigan,5 Pennsylvania,6 Colorado7 and Arizona,8 and to share the software in the operatives’ network. According to testimony9 and declarations10 by some of the technicians who have obtained copies of the software, they have had access for more than three years to the software for the central servers, tabulators, and highly restricted election databases of both Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Dominion Voting Systems, the two largest voting system vendors, constituting the most severe election security breach publicly known.
Combined, their equipment counts nearly 70% of all votes nationwide. Ninety-six percent of Arizona voters use Dominion and ES&S equipment; 100% of Georgia voters vote on Dominion machines; 98% of Nevada votes on Dominion voting machines and the remainder uses ES&S; 69% of Michigan voters’ ballots are counted on Dominion or ES&S equipment; 89% of Pennsylvania voters ballots
4 Emma Brown, Jon Swaine, “Inside the secretive efforts by Trump allies to access voting machines,” The Washington Post, (October 28, 2022). Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/10/28/coffee-county-georgia-voting-trump/
5 Clara Hendrickson, “Did data from Georgia voting machine breach play a role in alleged Michigan election plot?”, The Detroit Free Press, (August 31, 2023). Available at: https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2023/08/31/michigan-and-georgia-voting-machine-breach-connection/70702597007/
6 Jeremy Duda, “Group led by ‘kraken’ lawyer Sidney Powell hired the firm recounting AZ’s election to probe election in Fulton Co.” Pennsylvania Capital-Star, (May 24, 2021). Available at: https://penncapital-star.com/government-politics/group-led-by-kraken-lawyer-sidney-powell-hired-the-firm-recounting-azs-election-to-probe-a-pa-election/
7 Christina A. Cassidy, “Georgia election indictments highlights wider attempts to illegally access voting equipment,” Associated Press, (August 15, 2023). Available at: https://apnews.com/article/georgia-trump-indictment-voting-machines-conspiracy-theories-bc3db57cabd25fd8e335f85ed299e79c
8 Maritsa Georgiou, “Arizona voting system data sent to Montana lab as part of the latest audit,” NBC Montana, (June 3, 2021). Available at: https://nbcmontana.com/news/local/arizona-voting-system-data-sent-to-montana-lab-as-part-of-latest-audit
9 See eg., Lenberg Dep. No. 17-cv-02989-AT Document 1613, page 101-102. Available at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t9pkebeb44dg3it/Ex%2024%20%201613%20Depo%20Jeffrey%20Lenberg.pdf?dl=0
10 Michigan 6th Circuit Court Oakland Case No. 2023-285759-FH, MTN to Quash, Sep. 30, 2024. Pages 188, 240-241, 295 and 298. Available at: https://freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/20240930_motion_fld_to_quash_indictment-dft_104715112_ocr.pdf
3
are counted on Dominion or ES&S equipment; ES&S counts 92% of North Carolina ballots; and either ES&S or Dominion counts 97% of Wisconsin votes.11
Possessing copies of the voting system software enables bad actors to install it on electronic devices and to create their own working replicas of the voting systems, probe them, and develop exploits. Skilled adversaries can decompile the software to get a version of the source code, study it for vulnerabilities, and could even develop malware designed to be installed with minimal physical access to the voting equipment by unskilled accomplices to manipulate the vote counts. Attacks could also be launched by compromising the vendors responsible for programming systems before elections, enabling large scale distribution of malware.
In December 202212 and again in 2023,13 many of us, concerned by the security risks posed by these breaches, wrote to the Attorney General, FBI Director, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director outlining the security concerns and urging an investigation. Though there have been limited, localized investigations,14 there is no evidence of a federal investigation15 to determine what was done with the misappropriated voting software.
Other relevant parties have pointed to the serious risks posed by the misappropriation of the voting software. Before it was known that partisan operatives had taken the software, Dominion Voting Systems objected vehemently to providing its software to the same partisan actors who ultimately got copies through voting system breaches, stating that to give its software to biased actors would cause “irreparable damage” to the “election security interests of the country.”16
11 See: https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/makeEquip/mapType/normal/year/2024
12 Available at: https://freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/doj.fbi_.dhs_.coffee.ga_.12.12.2022.pdf
13 Available at: https://freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/doj.fbi_.coffee12.4.23.pdf
14 Joey Cappelletti, “Trump allies who ‘orchestrated’ plan to tamper with voting machines face charges in Michigan,” Associated Press, (August 3, 2023). Available at: https://apnews.com/article/stefanie-lambert-trump-michigan-election-fraud-bf9608af4b0972d41b5f4d303f5f6a29
15 Sarah Wire, “Are the feds ignoring Trump allies’ multistate effort to access voting systems? Experts raise alarms for 2024,” Los Angeles Times, (March 9, 2023). Available at: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/anyone-investigating-trump-allies-multi-100017273.html
16 Jonathan J. Coorper, “Arizona senate issues new subpoena for 2020 election audit,” Associated Press, (July 27, 2021). Available at: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-arizona-senate-elections-election-2020-e7e26601f50611195fd47a3ffb92c311
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Before the breaches in Georgia had been confirmed, the Georgia Secretary of State’s chief information officer testified that having copies of the software would provide a “road map” to the ways the system could be accessed.17 The Georgia Attorney General opposed providing copies of the software to lawyers for the Trump campaign in a late 2020 election challenge, arguing that images of the voting system software would provide “the keys to the software kingdom.”18
Notably, U.S. elections are potentially resilient because there are paper ballots recording the voters’ intent in most states, meaning that even if the voting system is at risk, the will of the voters can be determined reliably by recounting the paper ballots by hand (although we are aware that not all paper ballots are verified by the voter, and not all states take adequate care to protect the ballot chain of custody.)
Audits will be conducted in some of the most scrutinized states, but in key states they will not be conducted in a timely way that could reveal any concerns with the vote count. In addition, in most states the audits are insufficiently rigorous to ensure any potential errors in tabulation will be caught and corrected, and they cannot be considered a safeguard against the security breaches that have occurred. Specifically, Georgia’s audits are non-binding, and Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin laws do not provide that the audit be conducted before certification. Therefore, it would be impossible to know for these critical states if the audits uncovered errors or miscalculations before the state deadlines to seek recounts.19
Among swing states, only Arizona’s audit laws ensure that, if enough discrepancies are identified, the audit hand count will be expanded to correct a potentially incorrect result. In other words, aside from Arizona, in contested states, there is no legal mechanism for the audit to correct the outcome, no matter how much error the audit uncovers. Given these facts, the only guarantee for rigorous, effective audits of the vote in the swing states will be through candidate-requested statewide hand recounts.
The facts around the voting system breaches are not disputed; it is well-documented that there were severe, multiple voting security breaches before the 2024 election. To ensure that voters can have confidence that the breaches in
17 See:. No. 17-cv-02989-AT Beaver Dep Document 1368-3 Page 157-158.
18 No.1:20-cv-04809-TCB (N.D. Ga filed Nov. 30, 2020), Document 23, page 13. Available at: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xlvuqfqroogx7vg1sa4p9/Pearson-transcipt-gov.uscourts.gand.284055.23.0-Clean.pdf?rlkey=aghdw5w34rwqxugdxhnk8ij5b&e=1&dl=0
19 See: Verified Voting Audit Law Database at: https://verifiedvoting.org/auditlaws/
5
security did not taint the results of the 2024 election, we recommend pursuing hand recounts in, at minimum, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as they will provide insufficient safeguards against threats posed by the breaches of the election software and will not provide important information in a timely way.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this important matter.
Sincerely,

Duncan Buell Ph.D.
Chair Emeritus — NCR Chair in Computer Science and Engineering
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
University of South Carolina*

David Jefferson Ph.D.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory* (retired)
Election Integrity Foundation*

Susan Greenhalgh
Senior Advisor for Election Security
Free Speech For People

Chris Klaus
Founder
Internet Security System*

William John Malik
Malik Consulting, LLC*

Marilyn Marks
Executive Director
Coalition for Good Governance

Peter G. Neumann Ph.D.
Chief Scientist,
SRI International Computer Science Lab*

John E. Savage
An Wang Professor Emeritus of Computer Science
Brown University*
*Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only and do not imply institutional endorsement.

[questionseverything]

1. American democracy deserves a secure system where citizens can observe vote counting

But we don’t have that in most cases.

The letter provides evidence the vote totals could be manipulated, that should be all we need to hand count the paper ballots to check

[David Boyle]

2. How to contact Biden/Harris about this

https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/share/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/vicepresident/

[garybeck]

3. thanks! good info. all calls for a recount are helpful!

[FoxNewsSucks]

4. There's nothing wrong with verifying accuracy

[keepthemhonestO]

5. We are

One of the few "Democracies " that does not bother to hand count paper ballots. We could not be bothered and now we've lost it.

As much as I wish someone with the power to "do" something, they won't. As Dems we choose our leaders to play by the rules and it just won't happen in time.

[summer_in_TX]

10. Hand counted paper ballots are not the most accurate way of counting.

Human error creeps in, like getting tangled up and not quite positive where you last were. Plus it's slow. An elections administrator, a strong Democrat, now retired, who was responsible for the security of elections in a major Texas city, told me that we do NOT want to go to hand counts. I don't know about in the case of a recount, but I feel sure it is not the most accurate way to do that.

Humans get distracted, have to have breaks, have multiple reasons they might be inaccurate.

The key is to have a paper ballot that is readable by the voter and any auditor plus the machine that counts the ballots. They should be thoroughly tested for accuracy before and after the election. That is done in my Texas county. I'm familiar with the process and trust its accuracy.

[keepthemhonestO]

18. I respectfully

Disagree. I am glad we finally have paper ballots here in Georgia that can be audited and recounted. However, we have these machines that count them in the dark, in secret and we don't have access to the code and how they are counted. "They are counted in secret."

I hear people say it's too slow and would take too long, well America just went bye-bye because we couldn't be bothered. In other countries they seem to be more confident in their results.

If your going to count in the dark with a machine, we all need access to the algorithm. 🤷

tdmsressearch.com

[summer_in_TX]

21. The elections administrator I mentioned collaborated extensively with computer scientists

working to develop an open source voting system.

We should know the algorithms.

[keepthemhonestO]

22. I know

That all states do it differently and even within each state they have different machines. Check out Jenny Cohn, she's been pushing for election integrity for decades and last I remember she wanted hand counted ballots here in the states.

Sorry but I don't trust what's happening inside the box and the algorithms can be changed to count , however they want. For every fourth Harris vote switch one to Trump. Or just completely swap it all together. Jmho

[BoRaGard]

6. k and r

[Kid Berwyn]

7. GOP cheats because it's what they do.

What I find weird is that so many DUers take offense when someone brings it up -- or shows evidence of GOP cheating -- on DU.

Why is that?

[PatSeg]

8. Very conveniently, republicans set it up

so that Democrats would be unlikely to question the validity of the election results. By constantly proclaiming falsely that 2020 was stolen and that 2024 would also be stolen, they made it look like Democrats would be sore losers, just like republicans if they should question the outcome of this election. They were relying on our sense of decency to not make a lot of noise

I don't know if it was intentional, but they seem to have taken the "I'm rubber you're glue" game to the next level.

[Mr.WeRP]

9. This is being ignored by Biden, Harris and the DoJ. Why?

[garybeck]

13. how do you know?

I certainly have no evidence or reason to believe they are looking at it seriously
but if they were, they woulndt be announcing it
they would want to dot all the i's and cross all the t's before making any moves
and if they are smart they would start with a local election and have a local candidate ask for a recount, so they can have cover.

[Mr.WeRP]

20. Dec 12th comes in less than a month

If they were going to challenge the election or open an investigation, it would have happened. Mark my words, this goes nowhere.

[brakester]

32. I wrote to VP Harris

and just got a thank you for your comment on return.

[brakester]

33. I contacted VP Harris

about this.....
and just got a thank you for your comment in return.

[spike jones]

11. It would take about ten lines of code to change every third Democrat vote to Republican. itys.

[OldBoss]

12. Not compelling to me ...

I wish it were true and there was more data. My profession is cyber security and I work with tons of state and Federal agencies. I don’t know any of the folks who signed that letter. As well, if any of this is true - then the bad guys duped a ton of DHS and DOD folks like CISA, DNI, FBI, SS, Cybercom, and many other teams, or they compromised them and they’re all in on the stolen election which I highly doubt. In many states the National Guard works with these agencies as the local tip of the spear. I know my local crew well and their top job for the past 12+ months was election security and integrity. They’re amazing folks and their programs and processes are top notch.

Unless someone has real forensic data, this letter should not have much impact on anything. It’s pillow guy stuff.

[canuckledragger]

15. Of course it's not compelling

Mr recently joined guy that gives no proof of your claims.

[OldBoss]

28. What's compelling about it? ...

I think it’s interesting and hopefully true, but not compelling.

Proof of which claims? That the folks on the letter are minor industry luminaries, or that they did not share any forensic info?

I can’t prove the election was not stolen, but if someone is gonna shout that it was stolen, we need some serious data that a bunch of agencies are not sharing (or don’t have).

P.S. I’ve been a member since 2014 but obviously don’t post much.

[canuckledragger]

29. claims that you're some kind of 'expert' of course, Mr. just recently started posting.

[Mr.Bee]

14. Interesting

[Bluetus]

16. The ultimate problem is the systems that record votes without any paper trail.

Fewer than 10% of votes are cast that way, but most of those are in rural areas where it would be very difficult to detect. As we know, a few hundred votes here and a few hundred there can completely reverse the outcome.

The 90+% of ballots that have a paper backup can easily be verified simply by re-scanning them, or counting by hand if necessary. It should NEVER be allowable to have a ballot that cannot be verified absolutely on recount.

Unfortunately, we are in no position to do anything about that now. But if we ever are in power again, we must pass stringent laws that simply do not allow any unverifiable votes to be counted. It is really mind-boggling that ANY votes are allowed that way today after everything our elections have been through. The only reason to argue in favor of an election without a paper trail is that a person/party wants to falsify the vote.

[robbob]

17. On a related side note: anyone know if they still do exit vote polling?

Years ago (decades?) it was considered a fairly accurate gauge of which way a district was going. Then sometime around the 2000 election (coincidentally as electronic voting machines and Diebolt came to prominence) they started becoming strangely less “accurate”. I seem to recall a big fuss as it was decided to no longer rely on or even have exit polls; something done around the world to insure election integrity. So are they still being used at all? If not it seems to me election integrity in the USA is completely in the hands of large corporations and their potentially hackable electronic voting machines, companies that tend to favour Republicans.

[lostnfound]

30. They don't tell us the ACTUAL results, just manipulated ones

Edison exit polls is the latest iteration.
Since 2000, exit polls have been reporting higher democratic totals than show up in the election results.
In 2000 or 2004, they made up a phrase to explain it “Reluctant Bush Responders”.
They started adjusting the polls more heavily to represent the percentage of respondents in each demographic needed to EQUAL the results. WEIGHTED polls are what we the public are allowed to see.

They pretend that the purpose of polling is to give INSIGHT on different demographics. Basically so politicians can use it in the future to know what groups or issues they want to target.

The purpose of polling in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s was to predict — quite accurately — the results.
I used to watch them as a kid, and saw that they almost always came in within 0.2 % or maybe 0.4%.

But now, you can’t even find the unadulterated polls. They are more complicated because of absentee and early voting — but yes, they do they have some people standing outside the polling places.

I’m not making this up. Look for Edison exit polls and the fine print tells you about the weighting.

I think if you are a statistician professor or something, it is possible to buy pieces of the raw data for small regions, at a price. But you can’t buy it and publish it, and who would know what to believe anyway?

[lostnfound]

31. The fine print on exit polls. And they only do swing states now.

These findings are from interviews of 3,773 randomly selected voters as they exited voting places across North Carolina on Nov. 5; as well as from early in-person voting locations and through live telephone, text-to-web or by email. The poll was conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool consortium of ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News. Results are preliminary and will change as additional interviews are included and results are weighted. Like other surveys, exit polls are subject to sampling error and other sources of error. Totals may not add to 100 percent because of rounding

[RANDYWILDMAN]

19. bump

cause, I believe in the good people

[Hope22]

23. Wow! Thank you!

Time will tell!

[Meowmee]

24. Sad but I doubt

There will be even a minor audit / investigation of the main election much less a full one. Someone said they are going to find people living in PA to request it in 2 counties lets see if the happens. Apparently they can do that.

[Blue Owl]

25. IMHO, after all we know about him, it would be foolish to blindly trust tRump

This fucker is a cheater through and through, and has created his entire 'image' based on fraud, smoke, and mirrors.

I don't disagree that there are a disproportionate number of idiots out there who will buy anything the flim flam con men sell them, but it is so painful to let these freaks take control and make us all suffer due to their stupidity....

[stillcool]

26. I believe that there are people

in the government who are very aware of what happened. The problem might be that the who, the where, and the how, is complicated, perhaps multi-national?...and not provable. I also wonder what parts of our government are in on the steal. It's so easy to blame Kamala Harris, or Joe Biden....but wtf are they supposed to do? Kind of hard to fix something broken, with something broken.

[Loupe Garoue]

27. Absolutely

Should be investigated fully and the outcome adjusted if needed. Otherwise they should be hounded constantly to remind everyone of his illegitimacy.