Tag: Americas

Elections in Dallas County, Texas are once again the subject of scrutiny as another E-pollbook error has captured attention.

A video reveals that the incident recurred in Dallas County. As polls were preparing to close on November 7, 2023, poll workers observed their ES&S ExpressPoll E-Pollbooks exhibiting nearly the same behavior as in 2022: hundreds of ballots were added within fifteen to twenty minutes as the polls were preparing to close.

Just watch what happens:

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The poll book featured in the video was intended to contain 182 voters; nevertheless, the machine began to arbitrarily add an increasing number of voters until it displayed “1,377 voters checked in,” which is 1,195 voters in excess of what should have been displayed.

Additionally, the Dallas County GOP documented “extensive issues with the internet connectivity of the electronic pollbooks…from the start of early voting on the first day, 20-30% of the polling centers were offline for a duration ranging from two hours to half a day.” They claimed that “many polling centers reported that the electronic pollbooks were offline” on Election Day, with one location remaining offline until mid-afternoon.

On Tuesday, electronic pollbooks reportedly failed at several polling locations throughout Dallas County, according to the Dallas Express.

Jennifer Stoddard-Hajdu, chair of the Dallas Republican Party, discussed the incident with The Dallas Express, noting that election workers have been unable to check in electors.

This issue, according to her, permits voters to cast ballots at multiple locations across the county. She asserts that 26 pollbooks were impacted, with some remaining inactive for the duration of the day.

Stoddard-Hajdu told The Dallas Express the issue has “been going on all throughout early voting.”

Election officials allegedly told her that faulty equipment was to blame. As reported by the Dallas Express, “The pollbooks in question were provided by the Omaha-based commercial tech firm Election Systems & Software.”

“What I’ve been told by the elections administrator is that he thinks the problem is that they’ve got really old equipment and it needs to be updated,” Stoddard-Hajdu told The Dallas Express.

A polling location in Dallas County in November 2022 initiated the random incremental addition of voters’ names on the ES&S ExpressPoll pollbooks.

A voter at one polling location indicated “voted” on one pollbook and “eligible” on the adjacent pollbook.

Lead Stories cites the following from the Dallas County “Rumor Control” page in an attempt to downplay any scrutiny of the election polls:

“During the voting period, a qualified voter is accepted for voting at the e-pollbook and the transaction is recorded locally on the e-pollbook. The transaction is also uploaded to a central server hosted by ES&S through an encrypted connection. The central server receives the information, updates the database, and then allows all the other e-pollbooks in the system to download the transaction.

On Election Day, Dallas County processed over 200,000 voters on the e-pollbooks, which uploaded the transactions to the central server in a timely fashion. However, Dallas County noticed that there appeared to be some delay in the downloading of those transactions to the other e-pollbooks.

Once the polls closed at 7 pm on Election Day, the upload traffic on the network decreased and, as a result, the downloads appeared to have sped up significantly. Poll workers at many locations noticed the increased speed and continued downloads on their e-pollbooks after the close of the polls and reported those transactions to Dallas County and other entities.”

LeadStories “fact-checked” the system as “state-certified” in that “fact-check”; however, the Texas Secretary of State website did not list any current certifications for the ES&S E-Pollbooks as of the 2022 election. The Wayback Machine indicates that the last update occurred in January 2023, which is accompanied by a certification date of May 31, 2022.

They then cite ES&S’s then-senior manager of public relations Katina Granger as saying the following:

“During Election Day, any activity on the pollbook – including the check-in of a voter – is recorded as a transaction. These transactions are regularly synced through the day with the central database – with each pollbook uploading and downloading transactions. In locations where connectivity is slow or when there is a high amount of volume being shared by the secure network, these transactions may see delays uploading, downloading, and syncing. As connections improve or network volume eases, the pollbooks upload and download transactions which may have been previously delayed – updating data across all pollbooks. This transactional data may continue to update even after the close of polls, as long as pollbooks are connected to the central server, until all data is accurately reflected on each pollbook.”

Lastly, Lead Stories was informed by Sam Taylor, assistant secretary of state for communications for the Texas Secretary of State:

“Generally speaking, ePollbooks are required to communicate with each other and update in real time throughout the county, showing who has checked in at other polling places so that no voter can try to cast a ballot twice.”

This is how the system is supposed to work: A qualified citizen submits a vote, it is responsible for updating the central server, establishing communication with all other E-Pollbooks, and verifying that a voter who logs in has not previously done so at another location.

Moreover, the justification that their delays are due to “sluggish connectivity” in their locations is implausible, given that these devices are “critical infrastructure” and require priority internet access via CradlePoint and FirstNet.

Generally, poll workers maintain a physical copy of the electors they register on paper as a precautionary measure against potential damage to the internet-connected devices. A paper backup would be pointless if the E-Pollbook at a particular polling station reflected every voter in Dallas County, or even in that precinct. The paper backup would indicate that 182 voters had signed in at that station, whereas the E-Pollbook would reflect approximately 200,000 for the entire county or the entirety of the E-Pollbooks for that specific precinct.

The Dallas County GOP gave its report on what allegedly happened at the polls:

Here we go again . . .   You may recall my December 9, 2022, blog titled “It Is Time to Get Rid of Black Box Voting” (click to read). You may also recall the issues we had on the November 8, 2022, Election Day voting with the E-Pollbooks surging at the close of the voting polls – far in excess of the number of voters who checked in at the locations.  History is repeating itself.  During this Constitutional Election on November 7, 2023, we experienced widespread problems with the E-Pollbooks’ connectivity to the internet.  The E-Pollbooks require a network connection to keep them all synchronized for county-wide voting. It began the first day of early voting with 20-30% of the Voting Centers being offline for anywhere from two hours to half a day.  The issues continued on Election Day with many Voting Centers reporting that the E-Pollbooks were offline. In fact, University Park United Methodist was offline until mid-afternoon. During the outages, the Voting Centers continued to check voters in and give them ballots. None of us want E-Pollbooks connected to the Internet, so why do we care if the E-Pollbooks are offline?  Because it could enable a voter to vote multiple times.  In county-wide voting, if a voter checks into an E-Pollbook when it is offline, the other E-Pollbooks throughout the County do not have a record of the check-in and that a ballot was issued, so if the voter checked into a different location, he or she would be allowed to vote even though he or she had already voted.  Then, because of the sanctity of the secret ballot process, how does one remove that illegal second ballot from the pool and the count once cast in this situation? See the danger?

In fact, we had multiple locations on Election Day that had multiple E-Pollbooks that were not synchronizing with each other in the same Voting Center.  One E-Pollbook in a voting center showed Voter A as “Voted” and the E-Pollbook sitting right next to it showed Voter A as “Eligible.”  This is obviously unacceptable.  We requested an explanation from the Elections Department.  Here we go again … “the Cradlepoint (a brand name) cellular modems are old” or “the Cradlepoint cellular modems are not compatible with our 5G system.”  This is an excuse that some are questioning.

Like last year, we are again offered excuses, but there is no excuse. Excuses do not remove the danger to election integrity.

The Preliminary Election Reconciliation audit tape run and posted publicly after the preliminary election results were initially counted reflected the problem.  The audit showed 3,076 more ballots cast than checked-in voters were reported by the E-Pollbooks!  In section four of the Preliminary Election Reconciliation, the report notes: “Discrepancy attributed to E-Pollbooks not synching, to be resolved during the canvass.” Again, unacceptable.  We should not have to wait or need to rely on a reconciliation days after Election Day to find out the number of people who voted and the number of ballots cast. Both numbers should match!

And the use of the word “rely” is the keyword here.  THE MACHINES ARE NOT RELIABLE.  THE INTERNET IS NOT RELIABLE. THE SYSTEM IS NOT RELIABLE!

Plus, the story gets worse.

In November 2022, my election integrity team and I learned that the E-Pollbooks are connected to a server that is managed by our elections vendor, Election Systems & Software – aka “ES&S,” not Dallas County or the Elections Department.  While I understand that there are logistical issues to the Elections Department or even the County hosting its own election server or even its own cloud-based server instance, those issues do not outweigh the serious lack of transparency that is clearly created by a third-party, for-profit corporate entity being so deeply involved in our elections! 

How can we rid ourselves of E-Pollbooks and a third party being involved in our elections? We must end county-wide voting and go back to regionally combined precinct voting.  I believe abolishing the E-Pollbook system is the first step to hand counting paper ballots in regional precinct centers again.  But, to do that, we must change the State laws because our Dallas County Commissioner’s Court will never agree to end county-wide voting.   What am I doing about it? Everything I can.  I gave an interview to The Dallas Express calling out the unreliability of the E-Pollbook system. I have asked all poll workers who experienced connectivity issues to draft and sign an affidavit to that effect.  I have reached out to the Secretary of State’s office.  I am working with RPT election integrity officials.  I am coordinating with many of our strong election integrity groups in Dallas County and around the State.  And, I am working directly with our State Senators to try to get the lawmakers and the Secretary of State’s attention. I have testified in Austin about the evils of county-wide voting in the past and welcome the opportunity to do so again.  What can you do?  You can contact your State Representative and State Senator and demand that they address this issue. One thing I know from working with our lawmakers is that there truly is strength in numbers.  If we bombard their offices with emails and phone calls about the E-Pollbooks, they will listen.  This is the second election in less than a year where we have experienced serious E-Pollbook issues.  We need to strike while the iron is hot.  Please do your part.  Call your legislators.   

Postscript: This blog posting is just a quick beginning of a much deeper story that will grow over the next weeks. These are complex issues operationally, technically, economically, legally, and politically. Also, we are still investigating the facts about “what happened and why” and gathering more data that we can use to make our case. This will take several weeks BUT we are working on it already! Also, fixing the problem will require an equally VERY COMPLEX solution. There is no simple silver bullet to fix all the problems. To fully surface all the problems, the facts, and a roadmap to getting rid of black box voting, we’re going to write a series of blog postings over the next weeks. This is only Part 1, but additional episodes will be forthcoming on a weekly basis. Part 2 of this series will be published next Friday and will continue every Friday until we fully cover the complete story and get an executable fix started.

I have been assured that I will have a meeting with the Secretary of State and personnel from the Attorney General’s office very soon.  I will let you know what comes of those meetings as soon as possible.

A full audit of all the voting machines and E-Pollbooks is an imperative ahead of the 2024 election. No voter wants a repeat of the highly fractious 2020 elections.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to the federal vaccine mandates imposed curing the Covid-19 pandemic.

The nation’s highest court found insufficient reason to take up the lawsuit, brushing aside arguments that the vaccine mandates infringe on fundamental medical ethics principles like the right to bodily autonomy and informed consent.

Four nurses from New Jersey had petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the state-mandated COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

A decision of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals dismissing the nurses’ challenge as moot will not be reviewed by the justices.

The justices will not examine a U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals decision that dismissed the nurses’ challenge as moot. In the Supreme Court’s list of orders released on Nov. 13, the court rejected an appeal in the case, Katie Sczesny, et al. v. Murphy, Gov. of New Jersey, et al. The justices did not offer any justification for the case’s dismissal.

Early in 2022, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy issued an executive order mandating that “unvaccinated covered workers acquire their initial dose of the primary series of a COVID-19 vaccination by January 27, 2022.”

Furthermore, by February 28 of that year, said workers are required to provide “sufficient evidence” of having received all of their vaccinations. Individuals who fail to furnish adequate evidence “should be regarded as noncompliant.”

The lawsuit was filed against the governor’s office by the nurses Mariette Vitti, Debra Hagen, Jamie Rumfield, and Katie Sczesny.

The nurses petitioned the high court for an appeal on the grounds that the vaccination requirement violated their Fourth Amendment rights, which they claimed to include the freedom from medical procedure refusal and the right to privacy. They also claimed that the rule violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The plaintiffs alleged that while the order permitted religious or medical exemptions, the state “mass-denied religious exemptions in state institutions, stating that accommodating people with religious exemptions would place a ‘undue burden’ on the state because employees with religious objections to the COVID-19 injections pose a ‘threat’ to public safety.”

Additionally, they contended that the booster mandate “contravenes the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions,” which forbids the government from requiring the renunciation of a constitutional right in exchange for a privilege.

A district judge in the United States ruled against the nurses the previous year, finding that they “failed to establish probable cause of success on the merits of their claim that the Executive Orders violate their freedom rights under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause” and “failed to demonstrate immediate and irreparable harm.”

The action was deemed irrelevant by an order issued by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals months after the New Jersey mandate was revoked. The nurses, however, lodged a Supreme Court appeal.

In April of this year, Murphy issued an order to repeal the vaccination requirement for health care workers. The governor justified this action on the grounds that it aligns the state “with recent updates to federal requirements and reflects our different circumstances now, as compared to the past few years.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has previously rejected an appeal against vaccination mandates. The court denied a challenge by Missouri and nine other states in 2022 regarding President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 mandate for federally funded health care facilities. The mandate was subsequently revoked in 2021, coinciding with the conclusion of the public health emergency.

In January 2022, by a vote of 5–4, the Supreme Court permitted the Biden administration to implement the health care worker mandate while lower courts continued to deliberate on its legal merits. Concurrently, the justices halted the administration’s rule mandating weekly COVID-19 tests or vaccinations for employees of companies with at least 100 workers by a vote of 6–3.

In September, a judge in a separate case in New York City ruled that ten New York City Department of Education employees who were terminated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine must be reinstated with pay. Judge Ralph J. Porzio of the New York State Supreme Court ruled at the time that the city’s denials of religious accommodations for employees were unlawful, arbitrary, and capricious.

“This Court sees no rational basis for not allowing unvaccinated classroom teachers in amongst an admitted population of primarily unvaccinated students,” Judge Porzio wrote in the ruling. “As such, the decision to summarily deny the classroom teachers amongst the Panel Petitioners based on an undue hardship, without any further evidence of individualized analysis, is arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable. As such, each classroom teacher amongst the Panel Petitioners is entitled to a religious exemption from the Vaccine Mandate.”

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in Louisiana represents a significant threat to Big Pharma’s “liability shield.” It comes amidst rising claims of vaccine injuries.

“A lawsuit by Covid-19 vaccine recipients claiming they were injured by their shots may usher in long-awaited changes to how the federal government handles immunization injuries,” writes Ian Lopez of Bloomberg Law.

“Individuals frustrated by the HHS program designed to compensate them for their injuries are taking their grievances to court,” he continues. “In a lawsuit lodged with the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, they say the program is unconstitutional, depriving them of their rights to due process and a jury trial.”

“Lawyers say the move could spur Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services to reform how they handle vaccine injuries, as well as push more of the individuals alleging injuries to not just sue the government, but the drugmakers that the program is meant to shield from litigation,” the article adds.

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The first photos of the cocaine found at the White House in July have been released.

Photographs of cocaine discovered in a phone compartment at the White House of President Joe Biden this summer were made public for the first time by DailyMail.com.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Secret Service provided visual documentation of the white powder bag discovered in a cubbyhole utilized for stowing personal possessions in close proximity to the West Executive entrance of the White House.

Cocaine was discovered during the Biden family’s weekend getaway at Camp David, which included son Hunter, on Sunday, July 2, prior to the Fourth of July holiday.

Aside from the street closures and evacuation of the West Wing that surrounded the White House, the identification of the substance as the illicit narcotic prompted an eleven-day investigation.

Additionally, documents obtained by DailyMail.com indicate that the Deputy Director of the FBI was implicated in the investigation that sparked a scandal surrounding the Biden administration earlier this summer.

The White House grounds were evacuated over July 4th weekend due to the discovery of an “unknown item” by the U.S. Secret Service (USSS).

According to two officials familiar with the matter and an audio recording of a dispatch from a D.C. fire crew, a preliminary test had indicated that the white powder discovered was cocaine.

As a result of the discovery, an increased security alert was implemented, and the executive mansion was briefly evacuated. President Biden was not present in the White House at the time. Guglielmi mentioned that an investigation is underway to determine the cause and manner of the substance’s entry into the White House.

The Secret Service announced in mid-July that it has concluded its investigation into the discovery of a baggie of cocaine at the White House.

The agency explained that the case has been closed due to a combination of factors, including a lack of sufficient forensic evidence and the large number of individuals who passed through the area during the time frame in question.

The investigation was purportedly hindered by the fact that the cocaine found amounted to a mere 0.007 ounces, which would only constitute a misdemeanor offense in the District of Columbia. According to the Daily Mail, the Secret Service deemed conducting interviews with the approximately 500 people who were in the vicinity at the time ‘impractical’ and an ‘inefficient use of public resources.’

Anthony Gugliemi, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, further stated that conducting such a vast number of interviews could potentially infringe on individuals’ civil rights. He also noted that without any physical evidence, obtaining a confession would likely be necessary for progressing the investigation. Gugliemi explained, “Yes, you could have a consensual interview. But we have no evidence to approach them.”

Chuck Rosenberg, a former US Attorney and acting administrator of the DEA under President Barack Obama, supported the Secret Service’s decision, noting that agencies must prioritize and make judgments regarding which cases to investigate based on available resources.

Rosenberg remarked, “They could have done the interviews, but at the end of the day it’s a long walk through dry sand. They have finite resources and it’s OK for them to decide some things are worth their time and some things are not worth their time.”

The discovery of cocaine at the White House generated criticism and questions from Republicans, who received a closed briefing on the investigation’s results. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy expressed his concerns, stating, “There is no equal justice. Anything revolving around ‘Biden, Inc.’ gets treated differently than any other American, and that’s got to stop.”

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump shared his skepticism on his Truth Social platform, writing, “Despite all of the cameras pointing directly at the ‘scene of the crime’ and the greatest forensics anywhere in the World, they just can’t figure it out? They know the answer, and so does everyone else!”

Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley also weighed in on the investigation, alleging a cover-up without providing any evidence to support her claim. Haley stated, “I strongly believe this is a cover-up. For either Hunter [Biden], or someone very close to the President, and they don’t want to say who it is.”

“I know the area where the locker is. People don’t just go in and out of there. It is either the president, the vice president, cabinet members, or deputy directors. Nobody else is going in there,” Haley added.

She further questioned the accessibility of the area where the drugs were found, suggesting that only high-ranking officials would have access. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre emphasized President Joe Biden’s belief in the importance of the Secret Service thoroughly investigating how the drugs ended up in the White House.

The bag and its contents underwent forensic testing, including advanced fingerprint and DNA analysis at the FBI’s crime laboratory. Additionally, the FBI conducted chemical testing.

While Secret Service investigators compiled a list of several hundred individuals who may have accessed the area where the drugs were found, the absence of latent fingerprints or DNA made it ‘impossible’ to compare any evidence to the potential suspect pool.

Notably, White House staff members are fingerprinted, but participants in tour groups are not. The review of video footage from the West Executive street lobby entrance failed to identify any individuals or provide substantial leads, according to the Secret Service.

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