Cocktails & Popcorn: Wayne County Fired ElectionSource For Jacking The 2018 Primary Election Days Before The General Election

If there were inaccuracies in the Primary Election, then that means the Primary Election for the 13th Congressional District is nullified.

It probably had something to do with the absentee ballots, but, hey, what do I know?

I guess that is why the Wayne County Board of Canvassers deferred certification of the vote to the State Board of Canvassers, who then deferred to...well, we do not know because the vote has yet to be certified or recorded.

Go vote, we need the data.

Wayne Co. dumps election vendor, saying problems remain

https://www.electionsource.com/

Wayne County officials are dumping a software company used to display election results , saying the vendor hasn't fixed issues that led to delays and inaccuracies in the primary with another election less than a week away.

The county clerk said ElectionSource, the vendor used for election results since November 2017, has not completed fixes to its web-based reporting system.

"Less than a few days before the election, ElectionSource has not completed the improvements and at this late juncture we are not going to utilize something that we haven’t been able to thoroughly test,” said Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett.

I wonder if she has tested the alternative, if there is an alternative emergency response election plan, which I highly doubt, knowing what I know.  Someone, like...hmmm...I dunno, like the U.S. Attorney General, can easily challenge the General Election results, based upon this theory.

Garrett said in a statement Thursday that the county elections staff has been "working diligently with the web-based reporting vendor, ElectionSource, to prepare for a seamless night of web-based reporting on November 6, 2018."

Wayne County began using ElectionSource in May 2017 . A glitch in the vendor's software resulted after the website received more data than ElectionSource anticipated, county and ElectionSource officials said. You can find out how many people are eligible to vote in advance through the Clerk's Office.

The stall resulted in reporting fluctuations before Garrett instructed Electionsource to take their web-based reporting offline, the county said. The county also said the web-based results had no correlation to the unofficial tabulated results received by the Wayne County Elections Division.

Garrett said the vendor has not corrected its system and they will not use web-based reporting for Tuesday's election.

“I’d rather have accuracy than a glossy presentation," Garrett said in a statement. "An interactive web-based results page won’t matter if the information isn’t timely or properly displayed."

Jewel Ware, Wayne County Commission vice chair pro tempore called for an investigation into the system, saying in August that the glitch was "extremely problematic as the voting process should be error free as well as voters should know the process is without issues.”

In a statement Friday, Ware said she supports the decision to part ways with the software company. “I am in favor of making this change now, but we still need to look at a long term solution for future elections,” she said.

Wayne County Elections Division previously created PDF reports, which were uploaded to the Wayne County Clerk's website.

"This is a much less interactive method for viewing results by the public, but it is the only method available to Wayne County at this time," said a county press release.

Results summaries on election night can be found at the link for Wayne County’s Unofficial Elections: www.waynecounty.com/elected/clerk/election-results.aspx.

If there are no official results for the primary, that would tend to lead some to believe there would be no official results for the general election.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Cocktails & Popcorn: Brenda Jones, DOJ & The 13th Congressional Seat of Michigan

"A toast to the 'Legal Geniuses' (trademark pending)
who are about to launch another psychoptic"

She is absolutely correct in saying that there were election irregularities in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

Seriously.

One of my little birdies told me how she filed a complaint with the City of Detroit Elections Clerk, who referred it to the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, who called her to testify, but at the last minute, referred it to the Michigan Secretary of State Board of Canvassers for her to testify to what she witnessed, while employed as a precinct election supervisor.

She said the ballot count was off, people submitting on site ballots asking why their votes were counted already as absentee votes.

People were asking why there were absentee ballots with odd names being mailed to their homes.

Actually, the same thing happened at all the precincts.

Seriously.

So, with Brenda Jones filing for a write in campaign, I see no problem with referring the entire matter to the DOJ for further query since there is already a full blown investigation anyway, but hey, what do I know?

I know Jeff Sessions just said he is going to aggressively protect voting rights when it comes to absentee ballots.

Brenda Jones cites concerns over 'electoral process' for late write-in bid

Detroit — City Council President Brenda Jones is citing concerns over the "integrity" of the August primary and loyal supporters for her decision to mount a last-minute, write-in campaign as an independent candidate for U.S. Congress.

Jones, during a press briefing on a sidewalk outside of Detroit City Hall Tuesday evening, noted she was narrowly defeated in the "hotly contested and controversial" Democratic primary for the 13th Congressional District.

"So many voters contacted my campaign with issues about the integrity of the process and let me say, their concerns are my concerns," she said. "My hope is by re-entering as a write-in candidate that I'm shedding light on their concerns as well as related to electoral integrity. Voting is a right, and everyone's vote should count and be counted. Voters deserve a fair race and the ability to select the candidate of their choice."

Jones made the claims in reference to an election night software glitch involving a vendor contracted by Wayne County to handle results reporting that sparked delays and confusion. She stopped short of pointing fingers or calling for any type of reviews related to the outcome of the August race.

Jones filed an affidavit on Friday with Wayne County declaring her intentions for the Nov. 6 election after "soul searching" and "strong constituent feedback and support," she said. Officials with the Michigan Elections Bureau confirmed Monday that Jones' write-in declaration was valid.

It's unclear if the move could upset former state Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who narrowly prevailed over Jones. The winner of the two-year term will succeed former U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., who stepped down last winter amid allegations of sexual harassment.

Tlaib defeated Jones by 1 percentage point — 31.2 percent to 30.2 percent — in a six-person field. The margin was 900 votes, according to official results.

Tlaib, 42, would be one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress after the November election, in which no Republican is on the ballot for the 13th District.

Late Tuesday, Tlaib said some constituents are being distracted by Jones' attempt at a write-in campaign but said for her it's a "non-issue" and she's working to keep her supporters focused.

"I'm going to continue to serve the district. I have been very focused and going door-to-door ... and trying to stay rooted in the community," she said. "Primarily because I want to hit the ground running in Congress and stay connected with my residents when I get there."

Tlaib also called Jones' claims about the voting process an "unfortunate" move that's coming "seven days before the election" and stressed there are people on the ground working to ensure the integrity of the election.

TJ Bucholz, a campaign adviser for Tlaib, called Jones' write-in effort a "bizarre farce" being undertaken at the 11th hour that's "sour grapes" over her loss in the primary.

Jonathan Kinloch, chairman of the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party, on Monday, called Jones' write-in effort "a major distraction."

"Time and common sense" are working against a successful write-in campaign, which Jones can't possibly achieve, he said.

In response on Tuesday, Jones said "everyone has their opinion" and that she's listening to her supporters, adding "I'm not going to distract anyone."

Jones’ move isn’t surprising but will take a lot of work running against Tlaib, the Democratic nominee, Mario Morrow, a Detroit political consultant told The Detroit News on Monday, calling it a "long shot."

Even though she lives outside the 13th District, Jones had been considered the front-runner for the 13th District seat because of her name recognition after years on the City Council, where she was elected at-large.

Jones said she's not concerned over absentee ballots that have already been cast and said that her campaign will be working to get the word out.

"We have our means of getting words out," she said. "It's been on social media even before I said I was going to run as a write-in campaign."

Meanwhile, Jones won a separate special primary election in August and is the nominee to temporarily represent the district for the remainder of Conyers' unexpired term — about seven weeks from mid-November through Jan. 2.

Jones, 59, had the backing of the powerful United Auto Workers union and other labor groups, as well as Mayor Mike Duggan and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans.

Jones has not yet said whether she intends to resign her elected city post before taking office in Washington, saying last month she's consulting with experts.

House Republican leadership has said there's no precedent for allowing a member of Congress to also hold local elected office, but that it's "evaluating" the matter.

In reference to the partial term, Jones on Tuesday noted "it's also on the ballot" next week and "I have to be elected to any term."

 "The votes will be counted on next Tuesday, and we will move on next Tuesday to see what happens," she said.

The 13th District seat has been vacant for nearly 11 months since Conyers resigned in December.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Cocktails & Popcorn: Will Zimbabwe Set International Case Precedent For Election Nullification In Detroit, In Michigan, In the U.S.?

"Hold on, we got your international election
nullification case precedent for your Sweetie."

Zimbabwe is expected to rule Friday on certification of its elections.

The question at hand by the opposition is asking how can a fraudulent election of one race be acknowledged without nullifying the entire election?

For example, tomorrow, the Michigan Secretary of State Board of Canvassers is to meet to address, well, let us say at this time, "voting irregularities" in the 13th District House of Representatives, the 2nd District State Senate,and the 68th District State Representative election results.

So, if these three Michigan elections are found to have "voting irregularities", then how can the rest of the state races be acknowledged, as all elections are symbiotic, whether through political party association, campaign finance, endorsements or even certification of the vote?

Better than that, can an election be nullified if there is found to have been more than just violations in "election integrity"?

What if there is an ongoing, active investigation by the Department of Justice on election fraud regarding a previous election?

What if a grand jury has been empanelled on on election fraud regarding a previous election?

What if there is another ongoing, active investigation by the Department of Justice on a fraud that led to the calling of a special election?

What if there is another ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice on the entire construction of the electoral process, starting with the redistricting process?

What if there is another ongoing, conjugal collaborative investigation by the Federal Election Commission and Department of Justice into electioneering and campaign finance fraud?

What if there is a civil legal action pending in the federal court, presenting all the artifices and machinations of the various fraud schemes behind prior election?

What if there is another constitutional action in the pipeline to address 'the lack of due process' when it comes to a special election?

Perhaps, the DOJ OIG Horowitz report will answer these questions, but hey, what do I know?

I know I have cocktails & popcorn, everyone is watching Michigan, and Perkins Coie Sucks.

#perkinscoiesucks

http://votingisbeautiful.blogspot.com/2018/08/zimbabwe-judgement-expected-on-friday.html

Michigan Democratic data hack: Here's who was apparently behind it

WASHINGTON – It turns out that a suspected hack of the Democratic National Committee’s voter file this week may have really just been volunteers for the Michigan Democratic Party testing the system.

The Free Press confirmed Thursday morning that the DNC was backtracking on an initial report Tuesday to the FBI that someone had apparently set up a fake online portal to try to lure DNC staff into giving up log-in information as a way to gain access to the party’s VoteBuilder database.

DNC Chief Security Officer Bob Lord said in a statement Thursday that officials now believe the portal “was built by a third party as part of a simulated phishing test.”

A person familiar with the incident but who would not speak on the record told the Free Press that the test was done by volunteer hackers recruited by the Michigan Democratic Party to test security, though the state party didn’t notify the DNC or its account vendors beforehand or get authorization for the test.

The Washington Post first reported Thursday that the DNC had learned that the suspected hack was really a security test conducted by volunteers recruited by the Michigan party. Michigan Democratic officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the Free Press.

Lord said the test "mimicked several attributes of actual attacks on the Democratic Party's voter file."

"The party took the necessary precautions to ensure that sensitive data critical to candidates and state parties across the country was not compromised," he said. "There are constant attempts to hack the DNC and our Democratic infrastructure, and while we are extremely relieved that this wasn't an attempted intrusion by a foreign adversary, this incident is further proof that we need to continue to be vigilant in light of potential attacks."

CNN first reported the attempted back on Tuesday after the DNC told the FBI someone was trying to hack its voter database two years after successful Russian efforts to infiltrate its computer systems and release thousands of emails online, embarrassing the party during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Cocktails & Popcorn: Election Fraud In Detroit, So Easy An 11 Year Old Can Change Results In 10 Minutes

"Who did you want me to make the winner
of the Detroit election?"

And to think ElectionSource has to answer to the Wayne County Board of Canvassers about election irregularities in Detroit.

This is going to be good because they think we are stupid.

An 11-year-old changed election results on a replica Florida state website in under 10 minutes

An 11-year-old boy on Friday was able to hack into a replica of the Florida state election website and change voting results found there in under 10 minutes during the world’s largest yearly hacking convention, DEFCON 26, organizers of the event said.

Thousands of adult hackers attend the convention annually, while this year a group of children attempted to hack 13 imitation websites linked to voting in presidential battleground states.

The boy, who was identified by DEFCON officials as Emmett Brewer, accessed a replica of the Florida secretary of state’s website. He was one of about 50 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who were taking part in the so-called “DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village,” a portion of which allowed kids the chance to manipulate party names, candidate names and vote count totals.

Here’s the DefCon Voting Machine Hacking Village roundup of discoveries for the day! Day 1 / Part 1 pic.twitter.com/ovQs7uX7jK

— DEFCON VotingVillage (@VotingVillageDC) August 11, 2018

Nico Sell, the co-founder of the the non-profit r00tz Asylum, which teaches children how to become hackers and helped organize the event, said an 11-year-old girl also managed to make changes to the same Florida replica website in about 15 minutes, tripling the number of votes found there.

Sell said more than 30 children hacked a variety of other similar state replica websites in under a half hour.

“These are very accurate replicas of all of the sites,” Sell told the PBS NewsHour on Sunday. “These things should not be easy enough for an 8-year-old kid to hack within 30 minutes, it’s negligent for us as a society.”

Sell said the idea for the event began last year, after adult hackers were able to access similar voting sites in less than five minutes.

“So this year we decided to bring the voting village to the kids as well,” she said.

About 50 children participated in the DEFCON hacking event for children on Friday and Saturday. More than 30 of them were able to hack into replicas of secretaries of states, where vote tallies are posted. Photo courtesy of r00tz Asylum

In a statement regarding the event, the National Association of Secretaries of State said it is “ready to work with civic-minded members of the DEFCON community wanting to become part of a proactive team effort to secure our elections.” But the organization expressed skepticism over the hackers’ abilities to access the actual state websites.

“It would be extremely difficult to replicate these systems since many states utilize unique networks and custom-built databases with new and updated security protocols,” it read. “While it is undeniable websites are vulnerable to hackers, election night reporting websites are only used to publish preliminary, unofficial results for the public and the media. The sites are not connected to vote counting equipment and could never change actual election results.”’

But Sell said the exercise the children took part in demonstrates the level of security vulnerabilities found in the U.S. election system.

“To me that statement says that the secretaries of states are not taking this seriously. Although it’s not the real voting results it’s the results that get released to the public. And that could cause complete chaos,” she said. “The site may be a replica but the vulnerabilities that these kids were exploiting were not replicas, they’re the real thing.”

“I think the general public does not understand how large a threat this is, and how serious a situation that we’re in right now with our democracy,” she said.

Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania who helped organize the “hacking village,” said that thousands of adults including voting security experts also tried to access voting machines and other voting software currently being used in U.S. elections today to become “more knowledgeable about voter technology.”

He also noted that the children who participated in their own challenge last week were dealing with replicas that were in many cases created to be even more formidable to access than the actual websites used by secretaries of states across the nation.

“It’s not surprising that these precocious, bright kids would be able to do it because the websites that are on the internet are vulnerable, we know they are vulnerable,” he said. “What was interesting is just how utterly quickly they were able to do it.”

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Cocktails & Popcorn: Voting Fraud In Detroit Databases

"And in 2018, too!"

I believe everyone is waiting for the absentee voting ballots to be tabulated.

It would such a shame if it is found that there were registered voters who submitted absentee ballots in those Detroit Land Bank Authority properties.

But hey, what do I know?

I know what a quo warranto is.

Election results firm to explain glitches to Wayne Co.

The top two officials at a software company used by the Wayne County Clerk's Office to report results in the Aug. 7 primary election are expected to appear at Monday's Board of Canvassers meeting to explain the glitch that caused a delay in website results.

Jeff Delongchamp, president of ElectionSource, the company that handles election results reporting, said he and Steve Delongchamp, company vice president, will attend the meeting at 2 p.m. in Detroit.

"Both Steve and I will be there and look forward to explaining to the board what happened to the web site displaying the un-official results on the eve of the August 7th Primary election," Jeff Delongchamp said in an email to Wayne County officials.

On Thursday, Wayne County commissioner Jewel Ware called for an investigation into the system, saying said glitches with the website were "extremely problematic as the voting process should be error-free as well as voters should know the process is without issues.”

Wayne County officials and ElectionSource said last week the glitch caused a delay in results after the website received more data than the company anticipated.

"I received phone calls from people who were concerned,” Ware told The News last week. “Then, after hours of reporting, the system came back and those numbers had decreased. It just wasn’t one number — it was several numbers."

Jeffrey DeLongchamp said last week that the file containing Wayne County results was so large that it caused a 15-second delay in processing old and new data. This caused results to be doubled at times, he said.

"There were so many hits and so many people trying to scrape the site at the same time that we could not load the data correctly," DeLongchamp said. "It was an error that, unfortunately, we did not foresee."

ElectionSource has helped Wayne County report its election results since last November's election, DeLongchamp said.

Wayne County Clerk Cathy M. Garrett also requested an investigation into ElectionSource and a report of the company's findings.

On Friday, members of the House Detroit Caucus sent a letter to the Michigan Board of State Canvassers demanding an audit of Tuesday’s primary election results in light of issues at polling stations in Wayne County during the primary.

Fred Woodhams, spokesman for the Michigan Secretary of State, said his office has been in communication with state Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, D-Detroit, about this issue and is trying to get more details from her about her specific concerns.

Gay-Dagnogo said in a statement that caucus members were contacted by Detroit residents who said they were being turned away from their former polling place only to find that poll workers did not have accurate information.

"From what we understand from Detroit elections staff, there were a few polling locations that were moved before the deadline, and we were told that affected voters were given proper notice, but we’ll follow up with the clerk’s office about that. The city has 490 precincts so it’s not uncommon to have some move each cycle," Woodhams said in an email on Monday.

"I want to add that the Wayne County canvassing board started its work on Wednesday to scrutinize all the results and ensure everything adds up. The concerns of the representative and others may be resolved by the canvassing process," Woodhams said.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©