Voting Integrity
Boulderites, whether Independent, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Unaffiliated, or Freedom Party, believe that our elections should be free, fair, accessible, and honest.
Boulder has been a pioneer in making voting easily accessible to all people. Boulder has been so successful in getting residents registered to vote that 103% of all eligible voters in Boulder County are registered to vote.
Gold Standard?
Colorado has the reputation of being the Gold Standard of voting, according to Vote At Home. Colorado is one of five states using all mail-in ballots. In 2020, thanks to mail-in ballots, over 90% of the 103% of registered voters in Boulder cast their ballots.
While increased voter participation is good for freedom, questions remain about voting integrity.
Questions about Voting Integrity
- By what measure is Colorado the Gold Standard?
- Is it true that there are more people registered to vote in Boulder County than eligible voters?
- Why do most other developed countries ban mail-in voting?
- Are Voting Machines Safe?
- Are the Dominion voting machines used in Boulder County really as susceptible to hacking as California’s Democrat Senator Alex Padilla declares they are? (see “Election Officials Have Plenty to Learn from Hackers” by Alex Padilla).
- How does voting work in Boulder – This web page details the extensive voting process in Boulder County?
Election Security Community Briefing – Boulder’s Report on Election Security. Molly Fitzpatrick, Boulder County Clerk and Recorder, says that the goal of this report is to ensure that residents understand Boulder County’s approach to election security and the actions undertaken to protect voter information and the integrity of votes.
Boulder County perfected the mail-in ballot system and exported it to other parts of the state, like Mesa County.
How Does Boulder’s Gold Standard Work?
Colorado Leads the Country in Mail-In Ballots
Colorado Secretary of State Gina Griswold successfully oversaw the largest general election in Colorado state history, with 94% of voters casting their ballot using the mail or a ballot dropbox. In 2020, the Secretary of State’s office successfully lead efforts to expand mail ballot access nationwide. Her office engaged with nearly all 50 states to share Colorado’s experience and ensure that other election officials could run safe and accessible elections.
Details:
- All registered voters are automatically mailed a ballot before every election.
- In Boulder County, all signatures on mail ballots are compared to on-file signatures by a single, partisan election judge. Any discrepancies are examined by a bipartisan team of judges, and then further investigated if needed.
- Voters can submit ballots at secure 24/7 drop boxes, at voting centers or through the mail.
- Ballot harvesting is allowed. One voter may take an additional nine ballots to the mailbox, dropbox, or voting center.
- It’s required that all votes are cast on paper ballots, to ensure there’s a paper trail that can be verified.
- Voters can still go vote in person, both during an extended early voting period and on Election Day.
- Post-election audits are mandatory after every election to ensure accuracy. The audit ensures that ballot-counting machines property count ballots. This audit does not verify voters’ signatures, “Ghost voters” (those ballots cast by dead voters or those who are registered to vote at empty lots), or out-of-town voters.
http://kevinlundberg.com/a/email-updates/lundberg-report/
Are Voting Machines Reliable?
After the 2016 election, many people worried that Russians had hacked US elections. This led to a flurry of research on the integrity of voting machines. Below are links to some of the findings:
• “Election Officials Have Plenty to Learn from Hackers” by Alex Padilla, former California Secretary of State, now Democrat US Senator from California
• 9 Solutions to Secure America’s Elections, by Danielle Root and Liz Kennedy August 16, 2017 “U.S. election systems are not equipped to handle sophisticated cyber attacks and other interference.”
• Voting machines didn’t steal the election. But most are still terrible technology. By Cory Doctorow in The Washington Post.
• Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections (2020). HBO
• How do you solve a problem like election security? Matt Blaze tackles the age-old question at Black Hat 2020 by Matt Blaze – founder of Voting Village at DefCon (Annual Hacker’s Conference)
The Vulnerabilities of Our Voting Machines: When Americans go to the polls, will hackers unleash chaos? by Jen Schwartz, November 1, 2018
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-vulnerabilities-of-our-voting-machines/#
• Ballot-Marking Devices (BMDs) Cannot Assure the Will of the Voters
• Harri Hursti, – Worlds Leading Voting Security Expert. Hacking Democracy (documentary of the Hursti Hack), 2006
• Jeanette Manfra, one of the U.S. government’s most influential cybersecurity officials who investigated cyber threats to voting machines, is now at Google.
• SmartMatic – formed by Antonio Mugica, Alfredo José Anzola and Roger Piñate in order to fix election corrruption in Venezuela. Used to elect Chauvez. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Smartmatic, a multinational company that specializes in building and implementing electronic voting systems is Mr. Neffenger[Wikipedia]. In November 2020, Neffenger was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the Department of Homeland Security.[Wikipedia] Although Smartmatic does not own Dominion Voting Systems and has never provided Dominion with any technology, Smartmatic did license Dominion Software.
Election Integrity in Colorado
On Saturday, April 24, 2020, the Republican Study Committee of Colorado conducted an informal hearing on election irregularities in Colorado. Dr. John Eastman, Dr. Douglas Frank, and others who have studied the election processes in Colorado presented data about our election systems across the country and here in Colorado.
Colorado Canvassing Report reveals Voting Irregularities
In 2021, Colorado volunteers went to 9,472 residences and interviewed 4,601 voters in four counties at their homes. 367 people (8%) of those interviewed signed affidavits reporting voting irregularities.
- 3.4% reported Election Law Violation
- 3% reported that a voter had moved, yet still received a ballot. (database not updated)
- 1% reported extra ballots received
- 0.6% reported a probable election law violation
Irregularities included the following:
• Voters did not live at the stated address during the elections.
• Voters still listed at the address in question after the resident confirmed they didn’t live there (couldn’t confirm if they lives there at the time of the election)
• Voters with commercial or vacant lot addresses
• Voters who didn’t vote but had ballot cast for them
• Voter data manipulation
For more information on these voting irregularities, check out Colorado Canvassing Report and video presentation of the report.
Mesa County
After the 2020 election, Mesa County Clerk, Tina Peters, was confident that Colorado was the “Gold Standard” in conducting elections. A few months later, she began to have some doubts.
Six months later, Clerk Peters began to question this idea. In June of 2021, Colorado Secretary of State, Gena Griswold, requested a “trusted build” on the Dominion Voting machines used in Mesa County. To comply with Federal and State laws requiring that county clerks preserve election records for 22 months (Federal Law) and 25 months (Colorado law), Gena Peters performed a backup of voting machine’s computer files. This backup made images of log files, usage patterns, activities, and operations of the voting machines.
The key findings in the Mesa County Voting Systems are documented in several reports. Report #1 documents that almost 29,000 files had been deleted or overwritten, including the deletion of 695 files necessary for the determination of election integrity. Report #2 notes that computer components were manufactured in China and Mexico and configured with 36 wireless devices. Report #3 demonstrated the destruction of data; the absence of secure hash algorithm (.sha) files for each digital ballot image which makes the authenticity of each digital ballot image impossible to verify; and the unauthorized creation of new election databases
For more information, check out radio host Kim Monson’s essay, If You Are Getting a Lot of Flak, You Must Be Over the Target.
Voter Integrity in Maricopa County, Arizona
Maricopa Canvass – Research shows that 173,104 voters did not have their vote counted (so called “Lost Votes”) and 96,389 votes were cast by “Ghosts”, that is, votes cast under the names of registered voters who were either unknown to the residents of the registration address or who were verified as having moved away prior to October 2020.
103% of Eligible Voters are Registered in Boulder
Judicial Watch Study Finds 353 U.S. Counties in 29 States with Voter Registration Rates Exceeding 100%. – This October 2020 study revealed that 353 U.S. counties had 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens. The registration rates of those counties exceeded 100% of eligible voters. Boulder’s registration rate is 103%.
New Legislation
SB-153 makes it illegal for county clerks to do their job to protect the elections and preserve the records. The bill consolidates all of the authority into the Secretary of State’s office. Find out more.
Vote At Home Act – This US House bill expands voting by mail in federal elections and provides for automatic voter registration through state motor vehicle authorities.
Recall of Colorado Secretary of State
Recall Statement of Grounds:
Jena Griswold abused the office of Colorado Secretary of State and endeavored to prohibit transparent
elections.
• Subject of Lawsuit by Judicial Watch for failure to purge voter registration record of deceased
and Voters who have moved.
• Subject of Lawsuit by State Representative Ron Hanks for Illegal Election Activities.
• Illegally used unregistered company (Pro V&V) to certify Dominion machines for 2020
elections.
• Allowed Dominion to “upgrade via Trusted Builds” based on original illegal certification.
• Declared “Emergency” Rules prohibiting independent “Fraudits” without justifying the
“Emergency.”
• Declared “Emergency” Rules permanent following public hearing, she didn’t attend.
• Persecuting Mesa County Clerk for investigating 2020 elections and revealing 29,000 files
deleted, facilitated FBI raids of Clerk’s home and 3 citizens.
• Spent $2.8 million in Federal CARES funds, without oversight, on no-bid contract with
Democrat political lobbying/PR firm for TV ads she starred in concerning 2020 election.
• Addition of 25,000 ballots after transmission to Griswold from El Paso County Clerk,
November 2, 2021.
• Fined a conservative special interest group $22,000 for minor reporting error.
• In violation of State Law, Election Campaign Finance Reports for her 2018 campaign were
submitted late incurring fines which were minimized.
More Info on Voting Integrity
Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, by Molly
Rigged, the Movie – Trailer
Kim Monson Show on Election Integrity –
- How the Center for Tech and Life Influence the 2020 Election – Josh Philipp talks to Kim Monson about Mark Zuckerberg gave over $300 million to this organization which helped swing states vote Democratic.
- The Third Mesa County Colorado Voting Systems Forensic Report – Dr. Walter Daugherity, the co-author of the third Mesa County Election Security report, discusses the investigation into the Mesa County voting machine security and the report’s findings. Dr. Walter C. Daugherity is a computer consultant and also a Senior Lecturer Emeritus in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. Dr. Daugherity and his colleague Jeff O’Donnel are the co-authors of the third Mesa County Colorado Voting Systems Forensic report. The report focuses on election database and process analysis. Dr. Daugherity explains the security concerns with computerized voting, as transparency disappears. He then discusses the investigation into the Mesa County voting machine security and the report’s findings. Listen to his interview with Kim in the first hour.