Honorable Members of the Ballot Law Commission and Special Committee on Voter Confidence:
It’s disappointing that only two voting machines [Dominion’s ImageCast Precinct and VotingWorks’ VxScan Precinct Scanner] were exhibited on the 12th. I hope Clear Ballot’s ClearCast Go is not out of the running. It’s the current version of the one chosen by the Bucks County, PA, commissioners when they replaced their ancient machines in 2019.
I assume you are only considering optical/digital scanners, not universal-use ballot-marking devices (BMDs) for all voters.
The Bucks County, PA, Commissioners considered both optical scanners and BMDs, even though BMDs would cost roughly twice as much, and there was no reason for non-disabled voters to use machines designed for the handicapped. Such is the power of the voting machine vendor lobby in PA.
A couple of election integrity advocates I had worked with formed a new group, trying again to influence the selection, and this time succeeding. SAVEBucksVotes.org compared Clear Ballot, Dominion, ES&S, Hart Intercivic and Unisyn, concluding in favor of Clear Ballot.
They had so many qualms about ES&S that they devoted a separate page to it: https://www.savebucksvotes.org/expressvote-xl-problems, mostly addressing the high-priced, problematic universal-use BMD that Philly chose after intense lobbying by ES&S; but the section lower down on that page, "Ethical concerns about ES&S as a company," is well worth a look.
Re Dominion, in Georgia, after an examination for a lawsuit there, "a University of Michigan computer science professor who has testified numerous times on Capitol Hill about U.S. election security, J. Alex Halderman—claims that Georgia’s ballot marking devices (BMDs) 'suffer from specific, highly exploitable vulnerabilities that allow attackers to change votes despite the state’s purported defenses.'" The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, or CISA, agrees; Dominion’s touchscreen BMDs “have software vulnerabilities that leave them susceptible to hacking if unaddressed.”
New Hampshire would be using a different Dominion model, but the fact that the vulnerabilities Halderman discovered are so damaging that the judge sealed his report raises questions as to whether their optical scanners may suffer from some of the same weaknesses.
Dominion has also been damaged by Colorado clerk Tina Peters’ theft of voting machine hard drives and their release at Mike Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium.”
I regret being unable to attend the demonstration. Wishing you all well with a difficult decision.
Regards,
Barbara Glassman
Nashua, NH
