Proof that Voting Can be Rigged in the US (Not Yet Proof That It Is)

Proof that Voting Can be Rigged in the US (Not Yet Proof That It Is), by BlackBoxVoting.org. This might become a big deal. It reads like an outrageous scandal described in a bland matter of fact way.

The software used to count votes and tabulate results in the US and Canada is called GEMS. It has five trade names: Global Election Systems, Diebold Election Systems, Premier Election Systems, Dominion Voting Systems, and Election Systems & Software, and is also used by a number of private regional subcontractors.

It is used statewide in Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Utah and Vermont, and for counties in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. It is also used in Canada. Note that this includes several of the key presidential battleground states.

The articles linked to are a recent expose, revealing that:

  • A fractional vote feature is embedded in GEMS, which can be used to invisibly, yet radically, alter election outcomes by pre-setting desired vote percentages to redistribute votes.
  • A selected vote can be made to count as from 0.01 to 2.0 — some votes can literally be worth more than others.
  • This tampering is not visible to election observers, even if they are standing in the room and watching the computer.
  • Use of the decimalized vote feature is unlikely to be detected by auditing or canvass procedures.
  • It can be applied across large jurisdictions in less than 60 seconds.

So, a means exists to rig elections. There is no evidence I know of that it has been used, but its use is pretty much invisible and undetectable, and quickly and easily applied. If it exists, it will be used eventually. If not already.

The changes to the GEMS code from whole numbers to fractional numbers was made between versions 1.17 and version 1.18, in 2001. It is clearly deliberate, and has the means to rig any election in which it is used.

In August 2014 Bennie Smith [one of the authors] was approached by a number of candidates who insisted that their elections had been stolen. He disagreed with the group and offered to look into how the system works.

In October 2015, Smith received a report from a candidate named Wanda Halbert. On Election Night, she had noticed that as votes accumulated, the number of votes in her race were somehow getting subtracted as new votes were added.

precinct 07701 poll tape

On Election Day, as a part of his continuing research, Smith had taken a photo of a precinct 07701 poll tape (a results total printed from the memory card in a voting machine). In comparing the poll tape to the GEMS central tabulator report, Smith saw that the totals did not match. More votes were shown on the voting machine tape on Oct. 8 than on the GEMS central tabulator on Oct. 13.  Smith brought this to the attention of Shelby County elections officials but only after Halbert pressed the issue was the inconsistency corrected.

Smith began to research how votes that originate from the same source can change once they get into the GEMS program, beginning with the premise that sophisticated election theft would be near impossible, difficult at best…

After performing a series of testing iterations on the voting system used in Shelby County, Smith’s opinions as to whether a robust, configurable election tampering mechanism exists evolved from “doubtful” to “maybe” to “yes.”

A means to rig US elections exists.

At least in Australia we do it properly: paper ballots, that can be recounted as required, with scrutineers watching the manual count of piles of votes. No one in Australia is left in any reasonable doubt that the count is fair and sufficiently accurate.

UPDATE: Jon Rappoport reports that a contact of his who, so far, apparently wishes to remain anonymous states the following about the history of the GEMS system:

The Fractional vote [rigging] portion traces directly to Jeffrey W. Dean, whose wife was primary stockholder of the company that developed GEMS. He ran the company but was prohibited from handling money or checks due to a criminal conviction for computer fraud, for which he spent 4 years in prison. Almost immediately after being released from prison he was granted intimate access to elections data and large government contracts for ballot printing and ballot processing.

hat-tip Joanne