THIS PAGE WILL UPDATED AS DEVELOPMENTS WARRANT
AS OF SUNDAY OCT. 18, 2020
The Election Software Project (ESP) of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism is gathering critical information about the election software in seven battleground states - AZ, FL, MI, NC, OH, PA, and WI. The group served a public records request on each of the election administrators in each of the 492 counties in these states. The records received are being analyzed. The records requested contain, among other things, the names of the coders (n.b. some times referred to as programmers) of the software which counts and tallies votes in each county.
In the event it appears the votes were not counted as cast for President (as happened in 2004 and 2016), the Project is preparing to go into court on behalf of one or more voters in each state starting in some states as early as Wednesday morning, Nov. 4, 2020, to obtain court approval (as allowed in the relevant state and Federal courts) for immediate depositions of the software coders as well as production of certain documents (in AZ, FL, NC, and PA). In MI, OH, and WI only a candidate has standing to go to court on this basis.
On Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 5:00 p.m. PST, the weekly Zoom briefing by the Project’s National Director, Peter Peckarsky, whom I knew at MIT, will be held. A link to register for the weekly Zoom briefing is here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkcOqhrT0tHdTyMeCxp-cAh3y1Hix3Z7nq
A relatively complete description of the project is here: https://columbusfreepress.com/article/columbus-institute-contemporary-journalism-election-software-project-software-keep#_msocom_1.
Election Protection in Brief
Voting
Vote counting machines produce a “poll tape” which is supposed to list the totals of the ballots counted by the machine. These poll tapes are then submitted to the respective Boards of Election (BOE) and, in turn, to the state officials who certify the result. If counting software is running accurately, the polls tapes will correspond with raw exit polling data within the margin of error of the exit poll However, if the software in the counting machines has been altered, the poll tapes will not accurately report how voters cast their ballots. The reason this can happen is that vote counting software in the U.S. is seldom if ever inspected and yet is vulnerable to alteration by domestic and foreign actors.
Most states have no regular process for comparing all the paper ballots scanned by their counting machines to the poll tapes produced by the machines. In other words, the poll tapes are assumed to be an accurate although unverified statement of the vote count.
Exit Polling Data
Exit polling data in the United States is reported on election day/night by the National Election Pool(NEP), currently consisting of the ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC networks. Data is gathered for the NEP by Edison Media Research in Somerville, New Jersey. Since 2004, Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool (NEP) has conducted the only national exit polls in the United States which interviewed actual voters at the polls. The NEP, in turn, is the principal source of data about past elections for projections and analysis for every future midterm election, presidential primary and presidential election. As it has in the past, Edison Research will collect and provide data for the November 2020 General Election. Based on what Edison did in 2018, general election coverage by Edison should include exit polls at over 700 voting locations as well as in-person and telephone surveys with absentee and early voters all around the country.
At some point in their process, the NEP and Edison engage in a practice of conforming the initially captured, raw, unadjusted exit poll data to match reported voting results. Therefore,the initial, unadjusted exit poll data is the most accurate and important data to capture on election day/night before it has been conformed. The State Department uses unadjusted exit poll data to determine whether foreign elections are free and fair.
What if there’s a problem?
In order to detect if there’s a problem with the vote count in a particular state, a CICJ team will capture the unadjusted exit poll data as soon as it’s reported for that state. Then, the unadjusted data will be compared to the reported vote count. If the reported vote count is within the margin of error of the unadjusted exit poll data, it’s likely no tampering has taken place. If, on the other hand, there
is a significant discrepancy between the unadjusted exit poll data and the vote count being reported,it’s likely tampering with the vote count has taken place. In such a case, the U.S. State Department would not declare that “a free and fair” election occurred. Neither should we.
If there is a convincing discrepancy in a particular state, no civil action contesting official voting results can be filed in court until the state’s results are officially certified. Certification occurs on various dates between about November 24th (i.e. approximately three weeks after the election) and December 14th when the Presidential electors vote. Consequently, there is little or no chance of challenging the results of a specific state’s election if the effort doesn’t start until November 24th. This is why the CICJ teams on the ground intend to be ready to roll on Election Day.
For even more information:
https://columbusfreepress.com/article/columbus-institute-contemporary-journalism-election-software-project-protect-software-keep#_msocom_1