Voting Machine Fraud
Hackers at Cybersecurity Conference Changed Output of 30 Voting Machines within 2 Hours
August 3, 2017
Hackers at a cybersecurity conference breached 30 voting machines in less than two hours.
The episode demonstrates the US’ continued vulnerability to electoral tampering by state actors.
Some believe that going back to paper ballots is the only way to guard against future cyberattacks from Russia or other foreign powers.
Professional hackers were invited to break into dozens of voting machines and election software at this year’s annual DEFCON cybersecurity conference. And they successfully hacked every single one of the 30 machines acquired by the conference.
The challenge was held at DEF CON’s “Voting Village,” where hackers took turns breaching ten sample voting machines and voter registration systems, Politico reported.
Carten Schurman, a professor of computer science at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, was able to break into one voting machine in minutes.
“I could have done this in 2004, or 2008, or 2012,” Schurman told Politico. With access to the voting machine, Schurman had the the power not only to see all the votes cast on the machine, but also to manipulate the results.
It only takes $26 to hack a Voting Machine
Reasearches demonstrate three different types of attacks
Major Media Articles Reveal
Major Electronic Voting Machine Problems
MSNBC – A 2011 article titled "It only takes $26 to hack
a voting machine" states, "Researchers from the Argonne
National Laboratory in Illinois have developed a hack
that, for about $26 and an 8th-grade science education,
can remotely manipulate the electronic voting machines
used by millions of voters all across the U.S. The
electronic hacking tool consists of a $1.29 microprocessor
and a circuit board that costs about $8. Together with the
$15 remote control, which enabled the researchers to
modify votes from up to a half-mile away, the whole hack
runs about $26."
Christian Science Monitor – A 2015 article states,
"Computer security experts have warned for years that some
voting machines are vulnerable to attack. In Virginia, the
state Board of Elections decided to impose an immediate
ban on touchscreen voting machines used in 20 percent of
the state's precincts. When state auditors investigated
[they found that] while using their smartphones, they were
able to connect to the voting machines' wireless network,
which is used to tally votes. Other state investigators
easily guessed the system's passwords — in one case, it
was 'abcde' — and were then able to change the vote counts
remotely without detection."
Washington Post – An article titled "A Single Person
Could Swing an Election" describes the test of a team of
cybersecurity experts. The article states, "The experts
... concluded in a report issued yesterday that it would
take only one person, with a sophisticated technical
knowledge and timely access to the software that runs the
voting machines, to change the outcome."
Christian Science Monitor – An 2012 article is titled
"Could e-voting machines in Election 2012 be hacked? Yes."
It shows how easy it continues to be for voting machines
to be manipulated. The article states, "Rapid advances in
the development of cyberweapons and malicious software
mean that electronic-voting machines used in the 2012
election could be hacked, potentially tipping the
presidential election or a number of other races. For a
savvy hacker, the time and access needed to infect a
machine is so small that it could be done while in a
Miami Herald – An article titled "CIA expert: Electronic
voting not secure" presents the troubling results of CIA
cybersecurity expert Steve Stigall. "Computerized
electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from
altering voter registration lists to posting results.
Stigall said voting equipment connected to the Internet
could be hacked, and machines that weren't connected could
be compromised wirelessly. The [Election Assistance]
Commission has been criticized for giving states more than
$1 billion to buy electronic equipment without first
setting performance standards. Numerous computer-security
experts have concluded that U.S. systems can be hacked."
Note: The Herald strangely removed this article from
their website, but it is still available here.
MSNBC – A 2009 MSNBC article describes five county
officials, including the circuit court judge, the county
clerk, and election officers, who were accused of blatant
election corruption. "These alleged criminal actions
affected the outcome of federal, local, and state primary
and general elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. Clay County
Circuit Court Judge Russell Cletus Maricle, 65, and school
superintendent Douglas C. Adams, 57... caused election
officers to commit acts of extortion, mail fraud, and
bribery. Clay County Clerk, Freddy Thompson, 45, allegedly
... instructed officers how to change votes at the voting
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29778909 - 3/21/2009
Note: MSNBC strangely removed this article from their
website, but you can read how the defendants were all
found guilty and convicted in a federal jury trial on the
FBI website at this link.
For a treasure trove of media articles revealing
elections corruptions on a grand scale, click here.
Powerful Documentary on Electronic Voting Machine
The above media articles reveal only a few of the many
problems with electronic voting machines and elections
corruption. How many millions of votes may have been
changed or disappeared that we don't know about? We may
never know. And why isn't this getting wide media
coverage? For a likely answer, click
For additional powerful information on this, the
excellent documentary Votergate takes viewers on a
fact-finding mission across the US revealing stunning
evidence of defects and outright fraud in electronic
voting. Engaging interviews with whistleblowers and
courageous Americans, including members of Congress and
top elections officials, reveal critical information which
the mass media has given very little coverage. Watch this
powerful 30-minute documentary available at this link. A
second highly revealing HBO documentary titled "Hacking
Democracy" is available here.
Even Deeper. Below are excerpts from a riveting article
which goes to the very core of the problem. The author's
father and uncle uncovered serious elections fraud years
ago and suffered severely for trying to reveal the truth.
In 1992, they published the book Votescam which exposed
major elections fraud, only to have it effectively banned.
They both died young in the 1990s. Please pass on this
powerful information which is so vital to the future of
democracy. Invite all of your friends and colleagues to
forward this message, and to join together in calling for
A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in
By Victoria Collier
Squadrons of shiny new touch screen Trojan horses are
being rolled into precincts across America. Not, as we are
told, to make voting easier or more accurate. The real
reason America is being flooded with billions of dollars
worth of paperless computerized voting machines is so that
no one will be able to prove vote fraud. These machines
are not just unverifiable, they are secretly programmed.
Their software is not open to scrutiny by election
officials or computer experts. They are also equipped with
modems accessible by computer, telephone, and satellite.
We the People are responsible for taking back the control
of our democratic process. No one else will do it for us.
We cannot afford to be naive, or uneducated at this time
in history. In order to fully understand the extent of the
corruption we are dealing with, and to avoid making
dangerous mistakes based on ignorance, we must understand
the history, and the power structure, behind vote fraud in
I grew up with two men who spent twenty-five years
investigating vote fraud in America: James and Kenneth
Collier, my father and uncle. Their book, Votescam: The
Stealing of America was published in 1992 and immediately
banned by the major book chains, which listed the book as
"out of print" and actively worked to prevent its sale.
Votescam chronicles the Collier brother's groundbreaking
investigation into America's multi-billion dollar election
rigging industry, and the corporate government and media
officials who control it. [First six chapters available
The Votescam investigation began in 1970, in -- surprise!
-- Dade County, Florida, where Ken ran for Congress (with
Jim as his campaign manager). Ken was rigged out of the
election through a vote scam, which the Colliers later
discovered was used throughout the country for decades. It
went like this: The local newscaster would announce during
the broadcast of election returns that the election
"computer has broken down." Instead of giving official
returns from the county courthouse, the networks would be
running vote "projections" for the rest of the night.
Jim and Ken, who had garnered 30 percent of the vote,
noticed that when the vote totals came back on the screen
after the announcement, they had mysteriously lost 15
percentage points. They didn't get another vote for the
rest of the night. When they examined the "official"
election results from for the September primary, October
run-off and November final election in Dade County, the
record listed a total of 141,000 votes cast for the
governors race in each election. The exact same number of
total votes were cast for three elections with a different
number of candidates running each time. The same identical
figures were listed for the Senate race in the primary,
run-off and final election. This, of course, is a
When they compared the "official" vote results with a
print-out of the vote "projections" broadcast by the TV
networks on the final election night, they found that
channel 4 had "projected" with near perfect accuracy the
results of 40 races with 250 candidates only 4 minutes
after the polls closed. Channel 7 came even closer; at
9:31 pm, they "projected" the final vote total for a race
at 96,499 votes. When the Colliers checked the "official"
number . . . it was also 96,499.
The networks then made the astonishing claim that the
results from a single voting machine somewhere in Dade
County were run through a computer program in order to get
these vote projections. Elton Davis was the computer
programmer responsible for the magic formula that could
convert one machine's vote results into near perfect
projected vote totals for 40 races and 250 candidates.
When Jim and Ken confronted Davis in his office at the
University of Miami, he responded: "You'll never prove it,
now get out."
Finally the networks claimed that members of the League
of Women Voters were out in the field on election night,
calling in vote totals to channels 4 and 7. When the
Colliers confronted the head of the League, Joyce
Deiffenderfer, she admitted that there were no LWV members
out in the field that night. She broke down crying, saying
"I don't want to get caught up in this thing."
When the TV networks claimed that the courthouse computer
had broken down, and they would no longer be reporting
actual vote totals, they were lying. They had never been
reporting actual vote totals. The final shoe dropped
months later when an official press release appeared from
Dade data processing chief, Leonard White, which stated
emphatically: The county computer at the courthouse was
never down, and it was never slow.
This was the beginning. The Collier brothers had slammed
their boat into the tip of a giant iceberg. As they
continued to investigate, they were horrified to discover
vote fraud collusion among key individuals in every branch
and on every level of the American political system. Those
who were not benefiting from the fraud were too afraid to
fight it. Their search for justice led to dead-ends. Their
lives were threatened. They were vilified as conspiracy
theorists by the mainstream press . . . and yet they
The next quarter century was spent compiling a wealth of
FBI documented evidence proving that elections in the
United States have come under the tight control of a
handful of powerful and corrupt people. Jim and Ken both
died young during the 90's, as heroes to many thousands
who heard them speak on the radio and at political
meetings across the country. They helped to guide
individuals and groups working for clean elections in
their communities. The Collier's last hope was that
Votescam would be used as evidence in a serious
Congressional investigation into election fraud.
Many people still in power have yet to be held
accountable for their role in aiding and abetting vote
fraud. I'll give you two important examples. Famous Miami
lawyer Ellis Rubin brought the original Votescam evidence
to the Florida assistant State Attorney at the time, Janet
Reno. The evidence included the shaved wheels of lever
voting machines, forged canvass sheets, and pre-printed
vote tally sheets. Reno refused to prosecute, claiming
falsely that the statue of limitations had run out on the
crime. Years later, Rubin would tell my father that behind
closed doors Reno had stated that she could not prosecute.
Why? Because she would bring down many of the most
powerful people in the state.
Another notable Votescam criminal can now be found
sitting on the bench of the highest court in the nation.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, while still a
Federal Appeals Judge, single handedly destroyed what
would have been an historic lawsuit filed against Justice
Department lawyer Craig Donsanto, who had refused to
prosecute the extensive vote fraud evidence brought to him
by the Colliers. The evidence included videotape of the
League of Women voters tampering with ballots in a close
door vote "counting" session. The women were illegally
punching holes in already cast ballots.
I'd like to offer a brief list of important lessons
learned from twenty-five years of fighting vote fraud in
Secret vote counting is illegal. Counting faster is not a
justification for counting secretly.
Lever machines were the first to appear, and they were
riggable in a number of ways. One could rig the lever
machine itself, or the electronic scanning machines that
counted the ballots.
Computerized voting machines are the easiest to rig.
Their software is not open to public scrutiny, or the
scrutiny of Election Supervisors. There are nearly
infinite ways to program the machines to count votes
fraudulently. Since they are accessible by modem, they can
be controlled from a remote, centralized location.
Voting machine companies operate with no federal
oversight, certification process, standards or
Both the Democratic and Republican parties have been
complicit in vote rigging for decades, to their mutual
benefit. Vote rigging is NOT a partisan issue.
The corporate major media networks play a vital role in
perpetrating and covering up vote fraud.
Election Day media polls are untrustworthy at best.
The gravest error of judgment these days comes from those
vote reformers who honestly believe that the answer to the
butterfly ballot and hanging chad problems in the 2000
election is to embrace the ballot-less computerized voting
machine. With the ballot-less computer, there is no way to
recount, no way to prove any discrepancy, inaccuracy or
fraud. Just the fact that companies like ES&S and
Diebold would even make a ballot-less machine should be
cause for a Congressional investigation.
A most grave error of judgment also comes from those who
think that returning to a hand-counted paper ballot system
is somehow impossible. An MIT/Cal Tech study done in 2001
shows that manually counted paper ballots are the most
accurate system out of the 5 systems used in the last 4
presidential elections. They are totally verifiable, and
first-world nations across the globe still use them,
including Canada which counted their last presidential
election in four hours.
The bottom line is that a computerized vote count is a
secret vote count, and that's illegal. Technology cannot
supercede the constitutional and mandatory provisions of
election law, which require open and verifiable elections.
There is no way to do a public vote count with computers.
The count must be done by hand, in public, video-taped,
aired live on television, and the results posted on the
precinct wall -- just like they used to be. Ballots should
be counted on the same day as the voting takes place,
making it much more difficult to alter ballots. Hand
counted paper ballots and eternal vigilance are the only
hope left for us.
About the author: A long time writer and political
activist, Victoria Collier continues to educate the public
on the subject of vote fraud in place of her father and
For reliable, verifiable information on other major
cover-ups which directly affect our democracy, click here.
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