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We are a group of non-partisan citizens working to ensure fair and equitable elections. There has never been a more important election than the 2020 Presidential Election. This nation’s very survival depends upon every citizen doing the following:

1. Getting a paper ballot as early as possible.

2. Filling out your ballot.

3. Returning the ballot directly to the Board of Elections, preferably during early voting.

4. Telling others to use electronic voting machines as a last resort. The goal is to use a paper ballot (also referred to as absentee ballot or mail-in vote).

Don’t Let Russia Steal Your Vote in 2020.

Do you wonder why President Trump is removing postal sorting machines and mailboxes? Do you wonder why he was so opposed to a Corona Virus-19 lock down?

We believe he wants people out and about so he can drive them to the polls where they will use the electronic voting machinery to cast their vote–the same equipment Russia used to “fix” the Presidential Election in 2016. Protect your vote this time around!

Complete a paper ballot and deliver it to the Board of Elections by hand. Only use an electronic voting machine as a last resort.

Russia Wants to Bring Down Our Democracy

Russia fixed the 2016 Election and is planning to do it again. (See Putin Is Well On His Way to Stealing the Next Election.) But we have a plan to stop him!

The American people were initially told that Russia never penetrated state election systems. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As months and years passed, states gained a deeper understanding of the degree to which Russia tampered with their election systems. And even now, no one knows the full impact. What we do know, however, is that we can’t let it happen again.

U.S. Intel: Russia Compromised Seven States Prior to 2016 election

(NBCNews.com—by Cynthia McFadden, William M. Arkin, Kevin Monahan and Ken Dilanian—February 27, 2018, Updated February 28, 2018).

The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election—but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.

Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts—synthesizing months of work—had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.

Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.

More than a year passed before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security advised some states that Russia had invaded U.S. cyberspace and tampered with their election systems:

Russia Targeted Election Systems in 21 States, Successfully Hacking Some

(Techcrunch.com—Taylor Hatmaker, September 22, 2017)

On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security notified nearly half of the U.S. states that their election systems were targeted by Russia-affiliated hackers in an attempt to influence the 2016 election. In most of the states targeted, the hackers were engaged in preliminary activities like scanning. In other states, hackers attempted to infiltrate systems and failed, but in a small selection of states, with only Illinois confirmed so far, the election systems were compromised successfully. According to Homeland Security, none of these attempts were aimed at the systems that actually tabulate the votes themselves.

At least 21 states were the focus of these hacking attempts, including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington—as confirmed by the Associated Press and the states themselves. States like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin are among the swing states considered critical to an Electoral College victory last year. So far, other battleground states—including Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina—are not among those confirmed in the hacking attempt.

U.S. Tells 21 States That Hackers Targeted Their Voting Systems

(The Associated Press—September 22, 2017)

WASHINGTON — The federal government on Friday told election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems before last year’s presidential election.

The notification came roughly a year after officials with the United States Department of Homeland Security first said states were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia. The states that told The Associated Press they had been targeted included some key political battlegrounds, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The AP contacted every state election office to determine which ones had been informed that their election systems had been targeted. The others that confirmed they were targeted were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

Russian Cyber Hacks on U.S. Electoral System Far Wider Than Previously Known

(Michael Riley and Jordan Robertson, Bloomberg, June 2017)

Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.

STATES STILL DO NOT KNOW THE SOURCE OF WINNING POPULAR VOTES

U.S. security officials sought to allay public concerns by claiming that “none of Russia’s digital intrusions affected parts of the electoral system that counted votes” before they discerned the full scope of Russia’s hacking activities.

Some computer experts such as Brian Fox argue that given the number, nature, and vulnerability of U.S. election systems, equipment and portals used to administer state and federal elections in 2016, neither federal nor state officials are capable of determining the extent to which Russia influenced U.S. election outcomes or whether Russia altered vote totals.

Two years following the 2016 election, the Virginia Department of Elections acknowledged the vulnerabilities of Direct Record Electronic Machines (DREs) used to administer Virginia’s 2016 elections. The Department announced it was decertifying DRE machines in 22 localities due to hacking vulnerabilities and absence of a paper audit trail. The Department of Elections said the vulnerabilities of DRE machines would have made it almost impossible to detect suspicious activity:

Virginia Just Decertified Its Most Hackable Voting Machines

(Taylor Hatmaker, Techcrunch.com, Sep 8, 2017)

The Department of Elections decertified DRE Machines used in the Commonwealth because they “did not produce a paper trail, which election officials called “one of the most robust if old-fashioned safeguards against potential vote tampering.”

Because they [DRE Machines] can’t be checked against a paper record, these voting systems make it almost impossible to detect suspicious activity.  . . .

[T]he risks presented by using this equipment . . . are sufficiently significant to warrant immediate decertification to ensure the continued integrity of Virginia elections.”

Pew Research Center’s analysis of data from the Verified Voting Foundation reveals the extent to which State election systems used to administer the 2016 federal election were vulnerable. According to Pew, nearly half of registered voters (47%) lived in jurisdictions that used only optical-scan as their standard voting system and about 28% live in DRE-only jurisdictions . . . . Another 19% of registered voters lived in jurisdictions where both optical-scan and DRE systems were in use.[1]

Pew Research Pew Research Center’s analysis of data from the Verified Voting Foundation reveals the extent to which State election systems used to administer the 2016 federal election were vulnerable. According to Pew, nearly half of registered voters (47%) lived in jurisdictions that used only optical-scan as their standard voting system and about 28% live in DRE-only jurisdictions . . . . Another 19% of registered voters lived in jurisdictions where both optical-scan and DRE systems were in use.[1]

Research conducted more than a decade earlier corroborates Pew Research Center’s findings related to the vulnerability of state election systems. A study by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology reveals how quickly and expansive a mere one-minute intrusion into a vulnerable election system can be. Published on September 13, 2006, an abstract titled Security Analysis of the Diebold Accuvote-TS Voting Machine states:

Analysis of the machine [Diebold AccuVote-TS], in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks and that an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities—a voting-machine virus.

Some States were still using Accuvote Voting Machines in 2016 despite known vulnerabilities:

Good News For Russia: 15 States Use Easily Hackable Voting Machines

Touch-screen machines can be programmed to change votes and are nearly impossible to audit, computer experts say

(Jessica Schulberg, Huffington Post, September 8, 2017)

WASHINGTON ―In 2006, Princeton computer science professor Edward Felten received an anonymous message offering him a Diebold AccuVote TS, one of the most widely used touch-screen voting machines at the time.

Manufacturers like Diebold touted the touch-screens, known as direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, as secure and more convenient than their paper-based predecessors.  . . .

Felten was intrigued enough that he sent 25-year-old computer science graduate student Alex Halderman on a mission to retrieve the AccuVote TS from a trenchcoat-clad man in an alleyway near New York’s Times Square. Felten’s team then spent the summer working in secrecy in an unmarked room in the basement of a building to reverse-engineer the machine. In September 2006, they published a research paper and an accompanying video detailing how they could spread malicious code to the AccuVote TS to change the record of the votes to produce whatever outcome the code writers desired. And the code could spread from one machine to another like a virus.

That was more than a decade ago, but Georgia still uses the AccuVote TS. The state is one of five―the others are Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina―that rely entirely on DREs for voting. Ten other states use a combination of paper ballots and DRE machines that leave no paper trail. Many use a newer version of the AccuVote known as the TSX―even though computer scientists have demonstrated that machine, too, is vulnerable to hacking. Others use the Sequoia AVC Advantage, which Princeton Professor Andrew Appel demonstrated could be similarly manipulated in a 2007 legal filing.

Could Russia hack California’s Elections? It Would Be Hard, But Not impossible

(John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle, July 25, 2018)

While the prospect of outside groups changing individual ballots or flipping final vote totals are the flashiest election security issues, that’s far from the only damage hackers can cause, said Bishop, the UC Davis computer science professor. He has been involved in officially sanctioned efforts to break into voting systems in California and other states.

For example, the one successful Russian hacking effort cited in Mueller’s indictment is believed to have involved voter registration data in Illinois, officials in that state said. California and many other states allow residents to register to vote electronically, and those databases must be connected to the Internet, where hackers lurk.

“The leak of the voter registration data is bad,” Bishop said. “But what’s really bad is if you can get in there and change things.”

Social Security and driver’s license numbers are a potential treasure trove for identity thieves. But hackers looking to disrupt an election could change addresses, misspell names, flip party registrations or take dozens of other actions that could slow voting to a crawl.

“Who knows what they could do?” Bishop said. “Hackers could even scrub out the names of voters entirely, effectively disenfranchising them.”

[1] On Election Day, most voters use electronic or optical-scan ballots by Drew Desilver, Nov. 8, 2016

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One way or the other, cast your vote. However, we want you to do everything possible to cast your vote using a paper ballot (mail-in ballot or an absentee ballot). Only use an electronic voting machine as a last resort.

This year, you must do your homework. Contact your Board of Elections and find out everything you need to know about voting using a paper ballot, including:

1. Who can get a paper ballot.

2. When you must request a paper ballot.

3. If you must return your own paper ballot or if someone else can return it for you.

4. Whether you can return a paper ballot during early voting.

5. When early voting begins.

6. If the Board of Elections has ample paper ballots on hand and will not run out.

7. If and when you can hand deliver your paper ballot to the Board of Elections and what you must do when you arrive.

Contact

Email: info@revote.info

Tele: 202.817.1331