I had the privilege of attending the Cyber Symposium sponsored by Mike Lindell, of MyPillow fame, held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota last week. This conference focused primarily on election integrity, particularly as it pertains to election voting machines.
Mike’s heart is in the right place; he loves our country. He, along with his team of cyber, IT, mathematical, and legal experts, have put forward their own time and money to investigate the 2020 election, in particular the irregularities regarding the electronic voting machine system.
I have seen many critical and contemptuous of him and his efforts. To them I say: Has he done everything right? Probably not. Is all his data totally accurate and total proof of fraud in the 2020 election? That remains to be seen.
But he has done enough right and gathered enough evidence that points to manipulation, interference, and potential fraud large enough to impact the outcome of the 2020 election in the presidential race and likely other congressional races as well.
He is at least “in the game” and has some information worth considering and that presents reason enough to make changes with the voting machine system. He is not “sitting on the bench” as many critics are, scornfully judging those working to ensure our elections have integrity and thus seeking to keep our country on sure footing.
One piece of strong evidence we saw was by physicist and mathematician Dr. Douglas Frank from Ohio that demonstrated with voter data from Ohio and Pennsylvania and others that election participation in 2020 followed the exact same mathematical pattern in each county of that state. And another state would have a different mathematical pattern but it would be the same in every county in the state. He said that election participation would never be that precise mathematically, that it is mathematically impossible. He said it would be like rolling a dice 83 times and coming up with the same number every time. Impossible. That points to not just human meddling only, but also the use of machine interference and manipulation. To confirm this, he checked election participation data before the age of the internet, and patterns were random, as one would expect.
We also heard elections expert Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence captain, discuss his analysis of election trends and voter participation. What he showed demonstrated that the results of the 2020 presidential race defied every trend. For example, out of the 19 bellwether (historically proven leading indicators of election outcome, perfect since 1980) counties in the nation, Trump won 18 of them and Biden won 1. (By the way, Bremer County in Iowa is one of the bellwether counties!) Also, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina have all voted for the presidential winner since 1896 and all of them in 2020 went for Trump. In addition, since 1892, no incumbent president has gained votes in re-election and yet lost.
At the symposium I participated in a mock election as a “hacker” into an electronic machine voting system such as we use and that we have been told over and over, “It’s not connected to the internet”. The cyber and IT experts who had set up the system demonstrated how any voting machine no matter what company, particularly at the county and state levels both during data transfers, can be hacked and vote totals added to or subtracted from. Hackers can gain access wirelessly from a remote location even on voting systems that we are told “are not connected to the internet”! This is because, in fact, they are internet capable. This can happen in spite of county and state election officials working very hard and doing their best to do everything “by the book”. I know there are many honest, hard-working precinct election officials, county officials, county auditors, state officials that do a great job and this is in no way directed at or reflective of them; it’s out of their control.
Some at the symposium were calling for forensic audits of the 2020 election in all 50 states. According to Seth Keshel, based on past election and voter participation patterns, little or no fraud has been seen in Iowa. And Iowa is the only state with that distinction! Credit goes to many people for that because it takes a big team to have that kind of success: election precinct officials, county officials and auditors, state officials, Secretary of State, legislature, governor, and the courts. Thank you! After visiting with Capt. Keshel regarding Iowa’s unique situation, I believe that for Iowa to do a forensic audit, we would not gain enough to be worth the time and money spent. However, I do believe we can gain much from what is learned from forensic audits done in other states and adopt policies and practices applicable to Iowa that they adopt from lessons learned from their audits.
For example, we got to hear a presentation from some Arizona senators who told the story of the audit of the 2020 election conducted in Maricopa County and their fight to establish and conduct the audit. It is still being concluded. The Arizona state legislature is still getting resistance from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Dominion Voting Systems in responding to a subpoena to turn over their routers. Arizona legislators are proposing a bill making a number of changes to their voting system based on their experience with the audit thus far. I want to look that over to see what can be applied to Iowa.
We heard an interesting proposal that is being considered in Texas and has the support of the governor there. It is to adopt a voting machine system that has NO capability of being connected with the internet, wireless or otherwise. The only thing it can do is scan your ballot, make an image of it, and burn a DVD-ROM of all the ballot images in that precinct. Using a counterfeit-proof paper ballot that has a serial number, it would burn an image of your ballot. The voter would be able to look up their ballot online using its serial number. The DVD would then be taken from the precinct to the county courthouse.
Ideas mentioned for a counterfeit-proof ballot included currency (money)-grade paper, watermark that is UV light reactive, secure micro-print, ballot hologram, etc. This is to prevent “stuffing the ballot box”.
Some might say “Iowa’s elections are already pretty secure”; and “we didn’t have the issues that they had in the battleground states”. I believe that is true as far as we have been able to tell and that is great! We need to remember one reason is that the legislature has been pro-active regarding election integrity and security for years and come behind after every election to plug any loopholes that surfaced during that election. The 2020 election was no different; we came behind with a law to plug the loopholes we found as well as address mistakes made in other states to ensure they don’t happen here. We addressed voting periods, absentee ballot request forms, election misconduct penalties, poll closing times, voter roll registration maintenance, ballot harvesting, drop boxes, etc.
But one big area we left wide open for cheating was our voting machine system. That is what needs to be addressed next legislative session. We need a system that does NOT even have the capability to be connected to the internet, period. Not just that it’s not “turned on” or whatever reason may be given. There is NO good reason to have a voting machine that even has that capability, period. We should not wait until we have “definite proof” of our voting systems being hacked. If we wait until something that bad happens before we act, that would mean someone who is a rightful winner might be denied their office and a fraudulent “winner” be installed, someone the people did not choose. No honest person wants that scenario. Let’s take action up front to ensure we never have to deal with a situation like that in Iowa. It will be money well-spent.
By the way, the senators from Arizona testified regarding the attitude of Dominion Voting Systems as having nothing but contempt for the people’s representatives and for the voters of Arizona. Why do we want to do business with companies like that?? Absolutely not!
Some may say, “we can get such fast results on Election Night with internet capability, why should we give that up?” It’s possible a secure election may mean results come slower. However, now we are giving up accuracy and integrity for convenience and speed. We need to remember that convenience and speed serves only the media; accuracy and integrity serves the people.
For those that think I am digging up “old news”- “the election was over months ago, just forget it”. There’s no way we can forget it. There was enough wrong done that as a state we must ensure that all steps are taken to shore up the integrity of our elections. Otherwise, voters will not have confidence in their elected leaders or in their government. And in a republic such as we have, that confidence is critical to success.
If fraud occurred in the presidential race and perhaps in some congressional races as all the evidence so far indicates, and nothing is done to stop it, then what will happen in future elections? Evil that goes unchecked only increases. At what point do we act? When our voice is totally silenced? How many elections away is that? We should not wait to find out. We should act now.
It’s time to bring Iowa’s election system into the 21st century. And that means having a voting system that with 100% certainty is unable to be penetrated by 21st century threats. Counterfeit-proof paper ballots & no internet-capable voting machines. Easy to vote and even harder to cheat!
Anyone who supports this action MUST contact all state legislators as the legislature generally does not act unless it hears an outcry from the grassroots people. Only the voice of the people can overcome legislative inertia. You can contact them all at once by emailing: [email protected]
Or you can contact them as individuals at their own email address and phone number: https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/senate for Iowa senators and https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/house for Iowa representatives.
