Communist dictator Joseph Stalin stated that “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” Photo courtesy Pexels/Elements5Digital.
Group continues fight for access to election audit report
The SC Safe Elections (SCSE) organization, a grassroots group dedicated to election integrity in SC, sued 8 counties (Aiken, Beaufort, Charleston, Dorchester, Greenville, Lexington, Spartanburg, and York) and the SC Election Commission (SEC) for access to valuable digital audit tools called Cast Vote Records or CVRs. The group is led by Laura Scharr.
Scharr is not as her detractors say, an “election denier” or crackpot. Scharr comes to the table with impressive credentials, knowledge of the process and, more importantly, data. She earned a MBA, served for ten years as an executive with powerful Fortune 100 corporations like RJ Reynolds, Nabisco, and Brown-Forman, she’s a certified financial planner, a business owner, and more. The big thing is, unlike many who try to discount her, she has data to back up her claims! So, why does the State try to brush her and SCSE away?
When “twenty-seven states already have access to CVR’s,” Scharr asks, “why not SC?”
Obviously, elections provide voters with a way to make change in our state and a way to be content that as citizens we have done our part to express our thoughts on how things are handled. Election ballots are also a ticket to big money, a means to great power, and a method whereby the citizens and what happens in this state may be controlled if they are not totally honest.
SCSE sued the State of SC following “over 9 months of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests repeatedly being denied” said Scharr. She says her FOIAs started back in December 2021.
But, according to Scharr, those FOIAs have been ignored by the SC State Election Commission citing SC Attorney General Alan Wilson’s opinion from 2020. That opinion relied on facts provided by the State Election Commission claiming there is Personally Identifiable Information (PII) on the ballot and the potential for tying a ballot back to a voter.
The AG noted that “this opinion assumes the facts presented in the request letter as this Office does not have the authority of a court to find facts in an opinion.” The AG opinion relied on a 1939 SC Supreme Court ruling in Corn v. Blackwell, 191 S.C. 183, 4 S.E.2d 254, where perforated stubs were torn off the ballot and used as receipts.
The letter referenced is a September 28, 2020 letter from then Executive Director Marci Andino of the SC Election Commission. Andino served from 2003 -2021. The Post & Courier reported in 2018 that Andino had previously accepted gifts for accommodations, meals and 11 “advisory trips” to Las Vegas totaling over $19,000 dollars. She was then named to the ES&S advisory board. Andino stated in an interview that she was cleared to join that board by the State Ethics Board before joining in 2009.
The AG opinion stated that if a voter can be “easily identified” by a “cast ballot and/or related materials,” that would be enough disclosure to destroy the legality of those votes. He went on to say the AGs office opinion “does not require that scanned images of voted ballots and vote cast records are open to the public.”
Scharr says “there is no substantive evidence of that, and these issues can be easily rectified by customizing and redacting these reports.” The Corn case appears to be a far different method used then than what is currently in use with electronic voting machines.
A year ago, in August 2022, just prior to the 2020 election data being destroyed, SCSE filed the lawsuit. At that time a judge granted a temporary restraining order preserving the data in the above mentioned counties.
Now, the State Election Commission is counter-suing SCSE to restrict them from submitting, much less receiving, any Freedom of Information request for information from the 2020 election. As a point of understanding, the Freedom of Information Act was passed to make government more transparent, it’s called the “Sunshine Law” for a reason.
Scharr states this prohibition would be unconstitutional and a “terrible reflection of how our state agencies view Freedom of Information laws in the state.” This suit is expected at trial in late August/September this year.
Scharr says “This case is all about confirming that your vote is counted properly.” She goes on to say that “If we win the case it will mean that all candidates, voters and SC citizens will be able to see and verify how the vote was counted over time.” She emphasizes that “This is important since right now we just know the total counts at the end of the vote. We have no idea how these votes progressed over time.”
The US Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 to provide an auditable trail in the election process. That Public Law, HAVA 301 (6b) and SC SECTION 7-13-1655. states:
“Voting system” defined; (A) As used in this section, “voting system” means: (1) the total combination of mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic equipment, including the software, firmware, and documentation required to program, control, and support the equipment that is used to: (a) define ballots; (b) cast and count votes; (c) report or display election results; and (d) maintain and produce audit trail information….
Scharr maintains that the “audit trail information” is the Cast Vote Record.
Our own SC Constitution states in Article II Section 1, under Rights of Suffrage, that “All elections by the people shall be by secret ballot.” It continues with a major point of contention in this issue “but the ballots shall not be counted in secret.”
Go back and read that again. Note it says the votes SHALL NOT be counted in secret!
It was reported by The American Thinker that at a Democrat National Committee fundraiser in December 2021, President Joseph Biden (D) confessed publicly to several hundred assembled Democrat donors and party officials a tenet of all totalitarian regimes. His statement was reminiscent of Joe Stalin and the Bolsheviks about voting transparency:
“The struggle is no longer just who gets to vote or make it easy for eligible people to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote–whether your vote counts at all.”
Scharr and her SC Safe Elections group contend the current black box method of counting is unconstitutional. She says that “Once a voter puts their ballot into the tabulation machine that scans it, they can’t see how it is being counted.”
“If the public can’t see how our vote is being counted in the tabulation machines, we at least need some audit tools that help us understand the progression of votes over time,” she adds. “The CVR gives us this enhanced data—versus the “total vote count,” information provided from traditional audits. Scharr comments “We can’t determine the trajectory of the count, only the total end count.” She says, “If you wanted to audit a bank account you wouldn’t look at the ending balance, you would want to see the flow of funds over time. That is what the CVR provides a sense of the flow of votes over time.”
Scharr points out, the Election Commission and the 8 counties, defendants in the lawsuit, are claiming they don’t have possession of the CVRs, don’t know what personally identifiable information is and can’t “generate” them since creating records is not required under FOIA law. However, in depositions they admitted that they do have these CVRs, and in fact, have given ballot images and or CVRs over to Clear Ballot –a third party virtual auditing firm.
This was confirmed in a letter dated June 15, 2022, at 9:30am from Jay Bollenbacher Audit Program Director for Clear Ballot Group, concerning the SC 2022 Primary. In that letter Bollenbacher asks for Official Election Data, and says,
“This is a friendly reminder to make sure you upload your election data to sharefile and transfer the same data to the external hard drive…” He then writes, “we need the following data: All ballot images… Matching ENR results.txt file… Matching Summary results report —we will use this to compare the number of ballots cast and the number of ballot images received along with your vote totals.”
This letter indicates that the SEC knows what Bollenbacher is talking about concerning Cast Vote Records—CVRs!
The SEC also state that a ballot style is personally identifiable information (PII)—this does not appear to be true.
Note that the whole reason our state bought these new machines was to ensure the accuracy, security and integrity of the ballot. These are the reasons Scharr and her group are concerned, they don’t think these measures are there.
A November 2020 article in The State newspaper featured Dr. Duncan Buell, who it wrote was an expert in computer technology, a member of the Election Verification Network, and the Richland County Board of Voter Registration and Elections. The article went on to say that decisions about “voting technology in South Carolina have been made behind closed doors…” The article also went on to say that “Scientists believe the technology products S.C. officials ultimately selected, including the voting machines now being used in the 2020 presidential election, have not always met the “gold standard” for safety.”
Those voting machine purchase decisions have not been in the scrutiny of the public. The State quoted Lynn Teague of The League of Women Voters of South Carolina as saying “They’re not being made in a public hearing with testimony from a wide range of concerned citizens and experts.”
In testimony before Congress Professor Matt Blaze, then McDevitt Professor of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University with a long record of education and experience in computer technology, said “From a security perspective, by far the most problematic and risky class of electronic voting systems are those that employ Direct Recording-Electronic (DRE) machines.” These are the “touchscreen” voting machines that are currently in use in SC.
He went on to say that “The design of DREs makes them inherently difficult to secure and yet also makes it especially imperative that they be secure. This is because the accuracy and integrity of the recorded vote tally depends completely on the correctness and security of the machine’s hardware, software, and data. Every aspect of a DRE’s behavior, from the ballot displayed to the voter to the recording and reporting of votes, is under control of the DRE hardware and software. Any security vulnerability in this hardware or software, or any ability for an attacker to alter (or re-load new and maliciously behaving) software running on the machine, not only has the potential to alter the vote tally, but can make it impossible to conduct a meaningful recount (or even to detect that an attack has occurred) after the fact. If a DRE is compromised at any time before or during an election, any votes cast on it are irreparably compromised as well.”
He went on to list a plethora of problems associated with the machines, including: Alteration or deletion of vote tallies, ballot definition parameters, electronic log files used for post-election audits or “detecting unauthorized tampering”.
Scharr has noted thousands of errors in South Carolina’s ES&S voting machines in the past. The State article reported that Buell had pointed that to be the case prior to the 2020 election results being published with “recurring bugs”. Buell noting that “he found flaws with the code that led to votes being counted more than once, ignored or tallied incorrectly. Problems with the external hardware became more frequent as the computers got older and also led to votes not being included in official counts.”
In 2019, 23 scientists, professors and others wrote to SC state legislators including Speaker Jay Lucas, Senate President Harvey Peeler and SEC Executive Director Marci Andino about the security deficient computerized ballot marking machines. Those experts suggested that simple hand-marked paper ballots would be more effective and better serve the voting public of SC rather than the expensive computer driven machines, which cost the state over $51 million dollars.
Those experts and Scharr agreed that there is a problem in providing a sufficient “paper audit trail.” Buell stated that when the voting machine transmits voter selections it is as a bar-code and the “ballot is absolutely not voter verifiable.”
Key questions that need to be answered by the State Election Commission include: Why don’t SC State election officials know how to produce a key report for an audit trail? And, if SC election ballots have bar-codes that are read by the tabulators how can a person truly verify their vote? Why doesn’t SC use hand marked and counted ballots?
These election issues must be worked out for ballot security reasons and voter peace of mind.
If you’re concerned about ballot security and integrity or for more information contact:
Howard M. Knapp,
Executive Director
State Election Commission
1122 Lady Street, Suite 500
Columbia, SC 29201
Office: (803) 734-9060
Fax: (803) 734-9366
Email: elections@elections.sc.gov
Laura Scharr, Director SCSE
(803) 331-3721
Email: scsafeelections.org
Michael Reed is Publisher of The Standard newspaper, print and online. You may find our videos available on Rumble. The bulk of TheStandardSC video media channel has been censored by dominant social media groups like YouTube. YouTube, owed by Alphabet (Google), removed and destroyed all of our video work without permission or remuneration. That has stopped all potential donations from our many supporters on that venue. If you want to continue to see independent thought and reports please “like”, comment, share with a friend, and donate to support The Standard on this page to assure the continued availability of news that is ignored too often by the dominant media.
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