HB30: A Red Herring Election Integrity Bill

Mar 7

26 min read

362

by Dean Odle

“Red Herring: Something that distracts attention from the real issue (from the practice of drawing a red herring across a trail to confuse hunting dogs).”– Merriam Webster

Sadly, the “Red Herring” tactic has been the approach of the Alabama “conservative” legislature on many important issues over the years. Legislators give their supporters just enough conservative talk along with watered-down, crumbs of legislation to appease voters and distract them from what’s really going on in Montgomery. They make it look like they care about and defend conservative issues and values, but their actions don’t TRULY address the root problems. This happened with HB31 in 2022 that was supposed to stop employers from being able to fire someone over their vaccine status. The School Choice bill in 2024 was also a red herring because it pacified the masses who were crying out for school choice, but it didn’t go far enough to bring about REAL education reform of the entire failing system. And it still blows my mind that Republicans like former State Senator Del Marsh and current State Representative Terri Collins are the ones that blocked the repeal of Obama’s communist Common Core curriculum in Alabama schools. Many of our red state Republicans are obviously not as red as they pretend to be!

The Election Integrity Red Herring

“There are more federal regulations for ballpoint pens and magic markers than there are for voting systems and other parts of our election infrastructure.” – Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice

The most recent red herring stems from the outcry of true conservatives including President Trump for revamping of our election process. With good intentions, Representative Debbie Wood is sponsoring Alabama House Bill 30 (HB30) which is known as “The Alabama Post-Election Audit Act.” Andrew Sorrell who recently announced his run for Secretary of State in the 2026 election has endorsed HB30 and now ALGOP Chairman John Wahl put his stamp of approval on this bill.

As with all red herring bills, HB30 looks good on the surface and its’ talking points are convincing. However, it is a distraction from the REAL issue of election security and, if passed, HB30 has the potential to do more harm to our fight for TRUE election integrity than good. Why? Because while it does NOT address the most serious security problems in our state election system, it will allow legislators to claim they have done something about election integrity. They will beat their chests and campaign with great pride about their accomplishment, but I reiterate...HB30 will NOT secure Alabama elections.

The Root Problem

When it comes to election integrity/security, anything we do will be in vain if we do not address the root problem. After many hours of research, looking at evidence, affidavits, and courtroom testimonies, listening to cyber security experts and whistleblowers, examining the voting anomalies in my own 2022 Republican primary for Governor of Alabama as well as what we witnessed during the 2020 Presidential election, the main problem has become crystal clear. At the root of the election integrity issue is the Chinese-made electronic voting machines and Chinese-made laptops used to tally our votes. Both are very susceptible to cyber hacks and manipulation. Deep State agents/traitors (both Republican and Democrat) and Chinese Communist Party hackers and agents have been electronically interfering with the elections in the United States for a long time and Alabama is no exception.

On January 9, 2020, the US House Administration Committee held a hearing on 2020 Election Security. Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) was the Administration Committee Chair at that time. In her opening statement she said, “In the committee's May 2019 hearing on election security, Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote in his testimony that, and I quote, ‘There are more federal regulations for ballpoint pens and magic markers than there are for voting systems and other parts of our election infrastructure.’ So, there may be more work to do and much for Congress to learn about this industry. Many have concerns about voting systems with remote access software. And I think we want to make sure that companies no longer sell voting machines that have network capabilities.

In 2019, according to a report in Motherboard, a group of election security experts, they uncovered that back-end election systems in at least 10 states were connected to the Internet despite one company's claim that its systems were not. We need also to understand supply chains. In December 2019, a study released by Interos, a supply chain monitoring company, showed that one fifth or 20 % of the components in a popular voting machine came from China-based companies. Furthermore, close to two thirds, or actually 59% of suppliers within that machine's supply chain had locations in either China or Russia.” [i]

The National Journal reported in an article entitled Chinese Parts in Voting Machines Trigger Alarms on Capitol Hill that, “Three key voting-machine companies confirmed the presence of Chinese components in their equipment, sparking new worries about Beijing’s backdoors into U.S. critical infrastructure.” [ii]

The Western Journal reported in 2023, “A proposed amendment to Arizona’s election laws approved by the state Senate Committee on Elections on Monday would require that voting machines be made entirely of components sourced in the United States. Maricopa County, where 60 percent of Arizona’s voters live, uses Dominion Voting Systems, while nearly all the other counties in the state use Election Systems & Software.

Both Dominion and ES&S voting equipment includes components from Dell, which sources many of its microchips from China and Taiwan. The Western Journal reached out to Dominion, ES&S and Dell to determine whether components in the voting machines were made in China. Dominion and Dell did not immediately respond.

In an email Wednesday, ES&S spokeswoman Katina Granger said, ‘All ES&S tabulation software is developed and compiled exclusively in the USA. All final hardware configuration of ES&S voting machines is performed exclusively in the USA. Some components used in our voting machines are made in countries outside the USA.’

As the company’s website notes, China is one of those countries.” [iii]

In 2019 NBC News reported in an article entitled Chinese parts, hidden ownership, growing scrutiny: Inside America's biggest maker of voting machines, “…ES&S, which has operated in obscurity for years despite its central role in U.S. elections. Nearly half of all Americans who vote in the 2020 election will use one of its devices…

NBC News examined publicly available online shipping records for ES&S for the past five years and found that many parts, including electronics and tablets, were made in China and the Philippines, raising concerns about technology theft or sabotage.

Chinese manufacturers can be forced to cooperate with requests from Chinese intelligence officials to share any information about the technology and therefore pose a risk for U.S. companies, NBC News analyst Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI for counterintelligence, said. That could include intellectual property, such as source code, materials or blueprints. There is also the concern of machines shipped with undetected vulnerabilities or backdoors that could allow tampering.” [iv]

As far back as 2009, CIA whistleblowers were warning about the security risks of electronic voting machines…

“The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries' use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines' vulnerability to tampering.

Appearing last month before a U.S. Election Assistance Commission field hearing in Orlando, Fla., a CIA cybersecurity expert suggested that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his allies fixed a 2004 election recount, an assertion that could further roil U.S. relations with the Latin leader.

In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now.

Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results. ‘You heard the old adage 'follow the money,' " Stigall said, according to a transcript of his hour-long presentation that McClatchy obtained. ‘I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that's an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to . . . make bad things happen.’

Stigall said that voting equipment connected to the Internet could be hacked, and machines that weren't connected could be compromised wirelessly. Eleven U.S. states have banned or limited wireless capability in voting equipment, but Stigall said that election officials didn't always know it when wireless cards were embedded in their machines.

While Stigall said that he wasn't speaking for the CIA and wouldn't address U.S. voting systems, his presentation appeared to undercut calls by some U.S. politicians to shift to Internet balloting, at least for military personnel and other American citizens living overseas. Stigall said that most Web-based ballot systems had proved to be insecure.

The commission has been criticized for giving states more than $1 billion to buy electronic equipment without first setting performance standards. Numerous computer-security experts have concluded that U.S. systems can be hacked, and allegations of tampering in Ohio, Florida and other swing states have triggered a campaign to require all voting machines to produce paper audit trails.

The CIA got interested in electronic systems a few years ago, Stigall said, after concluding that foreigners might try to hack U.S. election systems. He said he couldn't elaborate ‘in an open, unclassified forum,’ but that any concerns would be relayed to U.S. election officials. Stigall, who's studied electronic systems in about three dozen countries, said that most countries' machines produced paper receipts that voters then dropped into boxes. However, even that doesn't prevent corruption, he said.” [v]

Hanes vs. Merrill

These vulnerabilities were more recently confirmed by Ethical Hacker/Forensic Cyber Security expert Clay Parikh. I know Clay personally and was in the courtroom for the entire eight-plus hour hearing in Montgomery, Alabama on August 30, 2022 (Hanes vs. Merrill). Both Clay Parikh and Col. Shawn Smith (Retired USAF) gave sworn testimonies regarding the vulnerabilities and supply chain problems in our voting machines.

1819 News reported in 2022, “Parikh has worked with Air Force Col. Shawn Smith (ret.), whose job was to oversee this security effort within the Department of Defense. Smith spoke at a seminar sponsored by Mike Lindell this past summer regarding all election machines. In this presentation, Smith detailed the level of scrutiny and accountability that must be exercised before, during, and after securing any weapons, equipment or electronics for military use. Since the enemy never rests in its effort to subvert and wreak havoc, those tasked with protecting the U.S can never rest either.

Smith applied the same level of Department of Defense scrutiny to election systems and found this area to be severely lacking. In particular, machine subcomponents are premium avenues for exploitation because they are added to a larger electronic board and buried within the depths of the machine and covered further by a plastic or metal shell.

Smith held up a subcomponent the size of a lead pencil tip that was disguised as a “jumper” used in electronic boards. It was pulled from an ES&S DS 200 tabulator and referred to by Smith as Telit LE910. That little piece would be able to provide internet connectivity if not discovered by a well-trained eye.

Parikh says that he has seen it over and over again in his own line of work. ‘There is no secure supply chain,’ Parikh said. ‘I have looked at hardware listings with questionable countries on there. I have seen bogus emails and contact information for vendors.’

The fact that both Dell and HP are the two computers used in these election systems is another red flag for security concerns, says Parikh. Both are manufactured overseas.” [vi]

John Merril and Wes Allen

As troubling as all of this is, what’s most disturbing is that Alabama’s own Republican “conservative” former Secretary of State John Merrill and current Secretary of State Wes Allen continue to tout that we are the “gold standard” in elections and that voting machines are safe because they don’t connect to the internet. This information regarding voting machine components and vulnerabilities came out in a 2004 book by Bev Harris entitled Black Box Voting (it was featured in the mainstream news media) and in the 2008 testimony of whistleblower Clint Curtis. Curtis testified to Congress that he was ordered by his Chinese-spy boss at Yang Enterprises in Florida to design a vote-flipping software program for Jeb Bush’s buddy State Representative Tom Feeney (R-FL).[vii]

The knowledge that there are hackable Chinese components in our voting machines and laptops is readily available (even in many news reports in 2016 and 2017), but this very serious issue doesn’t seem to bother John Merrill or Wes Allen. Either they are ignoring the vulnerabilities in our elections system for some reason, or they are ignorant of it. If they claim ignorance of all this information, then they should have never run for the job of Alabama Secretary of State.

Former Secretary of State John Merrill has been a staunch defender of the voting machines (and quite arrogantly I might add). He told Yellow Hammer News in 2018, “The thing I think our people have to remember—and we can’t stress this enough—is that none of our election equipment or technology is connected to the internet.” Then, just after the stolen 2020 election, John Merrill told CBS42 in Birmingham, “I am proud to report that the security of elections in Alabama is not in question.”[viii]

Merrill continued to repeat these lies and, in a letter dated January 10, 2022, that was sent out to all of the Alabama probate judges he stated, “…Since ERM computers will now need to run on Windows 10, the Secretary of State's Office will provide funding to each county for the purchase of one new ERM tabulation computer. Attached to this letter, please find an application, with the supporting invoice, for your county to be provided the funds to acquire from ES&S a new laptop computer which will run on Windows 10 and will be a stand-alone computer with no network capabilities. The laptop will come with ERM software already installed.”

However, the supporting invoice/purchase order for the new Dell laptops from ES&S reflects that the laptops WERE equipped with hardware that would enable them to connect to the internet. I have a copy of this state purchase order that was submitted in court as evidence against our election system. It very clearly shows the specs on the ES&S Dell laptop computers that were purchased by the State of Alabama and lists among the hardware the “Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 2x2. 11ax 160MHz + Bluetooth 5.1.” This hardware allows internet connectivity! So, John Merrill was either woefully ignorant, terribly incompetent, intentionally lying, or worse.

And let’s not forget our current Secretary of State Wes Allen, who was at that time on the Alabama Electronic Voting Committee. That means Mr. Allen was part of the group that “certified” or allowed this change of laptops in our election system. Then, after Wes Allen became Secretary of State, he had the audacity to state on ABC33/40 News on March 4, 2024 that… “I want the people of Alabama to understand that our elections are fair, safe, secure, and transparent. And the tabulators that we use…that the voters will use tomorrow are not connected to the internet. They cannot be connected to the internet.” [ix] Is this corruption or ignorance? Either way it is unacceptable.

To make matters worse, while writing this article, I decided to search for the exact wireless card on the purchase order for the ES&S Dell laptops. I simply copied and pasted “Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 2x2. 11ax 160MHz + Bluetooth 5.1” into my Google search engine and found it immediately. Do you know what really stood out to me about the wireless card in the laptops Alabama probate judges use to tabulate all of the election results from all over their counties? The very clear writing on it that said, “Made in China.”

In the court case Hanes v. Merrill (that attempted to get rid of the voting machines in Alabama), Col. Shawn Smith testified that the most sophisticated weapons systems in the United States are hacked regularly. He said that our military has even had weapons turned on by hackers and they had to scramble to stop these intrusions. Smith shared how CISA (the Department of Homeland Security agency over election infrastructure) was hacked for ten months and they didn’t even know they were hacked. [x]

More recently, China hacked into DHS again as well as the US Treasury and all major telecom companies. But somehow Alabama’s elections are untouchable? I guess that John Merrill and Wes Allen must have some kind of hack-blocking fairy dust that they sprinkle over Alabama’s ES&S and Dell laptop voting systems. How else could they be so emphatic about our election machines being secure?

Another interesting tidbit of information that I discovered while writing this article comes from the website of the Alabama Center for Law & Liberty. They were part of a team of lawyers that brought the lawsuit against Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill and the voting machines. In their Case Summary of Hanes v. Merrill, they wrote “As the lawsuit went on, the Alabama Secretary of State backtracked on his initial claim that the machines could not be connected to the internet. The machines send a preliminary count of the votes to the Secretary of State’s office in Montgomery, which could not be done if they could not connect to the internet. The plaintiffs presented expert testimony that such internet communications are not merely one-way. Instead, if data can be sent, then the machines can be hacked.” [xi]

When I went to vote on November 3, 2024, I asked one of the longtime poll workers how they got the vote totals from the machine to the county courthouse and he said, “Through the internet.” I was shocked because I had been told that they used ES&S thumb drives, and a deputy sheriff would deliver those to the county courthouse. I guess this is why John Merrill had to backtrack and admit that the voting machines do connect to the internet.

As recent as February 26, 2025, at the meeting with Alabama Republican women during Legislative Days, our current Secretary of State Wes Allen who is now campaigning for Lt. Governor said that he flew out to our ES&S voting machines vendor to ensure that “…our machines are secure and cannot connect to the internet.” This sounds great but is Wes Allen a cyber security or computer expert like Clay Parikh, Col. Shawn Smith, or MIT graduate and NSA/CIA contractor Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia? Has Wes Allen opened the ES&S machines to see what components are on the inside and verify their country of origin? No, he has not, and neither is he (or John Merrill) qualified to do so. They believe the voting machines are secure because ES&S vendors told them they are secure or because their handlers told them to say that.

Paper Ballots & Hand Counting

A 2021 article by the Western Journal entitled, Germany Refuses to Use Voting Machines Like US Over Fears of Fraud, Will Only Use Paper Ballots, says it all! The article states, “The ballot box for in-person votes is also locked and watched by at least three people from the electoral board to make sure no unauthorized ballots are added. When voting ends at 6 p.m. on election day, the boxes are then opened in the presence of all members of the electoral committee and observers and counted. Federal Returning Officer Georg Thiel, the man responsible for overseeing Germany’s elections, highlighted that the country does not use voting machines, but instead opts for paper ballots that are hand-counted.” [xii]

According to the Associated Press French voters use “…paper ballots that are cast in person and counted by hand. Despite periodic calls for more flexibility or modernization, France doesn’t do mail-in voting, early voting or use voting machines en masse like the United States.” Elections Canada shared in a Tweet that Canada does the same thing… “[We do not] use Dominion Voting Systems. We use paper ballots counted by hand in front of scrutineers and have NEVER used voting machines or electronic tabulators to count votes in our 100-year history…” [xiii]

TDMS Research reports, “The United States remains one of the few major democracies in the world that continue to allow computerized vote counting—not observable by the public—to determine the results of its elections. Countries such as Germany, Norway, Netherlands, France, Canada, Denmark, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, and most other countries, protect the integrity and trust of their elections with publicly observable hand-counting of paper ballots…

According to a 2020 Gallup World Poll, only 40% of Americans say they are confident in the honesty of U.S. elections. Finland and Norway with 89% of their citizens expressing confidence in the honesty of their elections along with the citizens of 25 other countries have greater confidence in their elections than do Americans.”

“Germany has in the past used voting machines, as is done in the United States and Brazil. But in 2009, the country's highest court has banned computers from the voting process on the grounds that the process had to be public. The same goes for counting the votes: ‘Every single vote has to be read out loudly and noted in a public protocol. Transparency is key,’ said Pötzsch.

‘Public’ here means that anyone can attend the counting process. And should there be doubts about the results from a certain polling station, it has to be possible to recount the votes. This was, according to the court's ruling - not possible when voting machines were used.” [xiv]

We must ask the question, why did all of these very technologically advanced countries stop (or like Canada never started) using electronic voting machines? I can tell you why. They found out that China and bad actors in the United States like the Bush family/NSA/CIA contractors had developed sophisticated computer programs to hack voting machines and flip votes the way they wanted them to go without being detected.

More Whistleblowers

Here are the sworn statements of former government contractors Dennis Montgomery and MIT graduate Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia who became whistleblowers on cyber election tampering by the US federal government (Deep State actors), using technology that Montgomery designed for use on foreign elections.

Dennis Montgomery [xv]stated under oath, “When I learned of CIA and NSA’s domestic surveillance using technology I had developed, I filed whistleblower complaints with the Inspectors General of the CIA, Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Justice (DOJ), Air Force, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and others.

On March 4, 2010, the DOJ and the FBI raided the law offices of my attorneys, Liner Law Firm, without a search warrant or any probable cause and seized millions of pages of attorney-client documents, U.S. government communications, election data collected in FBI/CIA/NSA domestic surveillance programs I worked in, including PROOF of U.S. government election surveillance and TAMPERING. Seized documents and electronic media reflected voting machines’ manufacturers’ vulnerabilities to hacking. Voting machine manufacturers, communications and intellectual property were hijacked by the US government numerous times over the years. I worked in FBI CIA NSA surveillance programs foreign and domestic.

On August 3, 2014, I met with Federal Judge Royce Lamberth in his office in the federal courthouse in DC with others present and discussed FBI/CIA/NSA domestic surveillance programs I worked in including election tampering and the abuses of high-ranking US government officials who directed and supervise this illegal domestic surveillance programs I worked in first in Reno Nevada and then at Fort Washington Maryland. I presented information to him to support the claims I was making in my previous whistleblower complaint. I was seeking immunity to allow me to present my evidence to the super-secret surveillance programs I worked in. He reached out first to Senator Grassley and then to FBI general counsel James Baker. I provided Judge Lamberth PROOF OF ELECTION INTERFERENCE both foreign and domestic. FBI general counsel James Baker later denied any knowledge of such FBI/CIA/NSA domestic surveillance programs but had to walk back those comments in his testimony before a House committee on US government surveillance matters.”

MIT graduate Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia stated under oath, “I am employed by a large defense contractor as a chief cyber security engineer and a subject matter expert in cyber security. During my career, I have conducted security assessments, data analysis and security counterintelligence, and forensic investigations on hundreds of systems. My experience spans 35 years performing technical assessment, mathematical modeling, cyber-attack pattern analysis, and security counterintelligence linked to FIS operators, including China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. I have worked as a consultant and subject matter expert supporting the Department of Defense, FBI and US intelligence community (USIC) agencies such as the DIA, CIA, NSA, NGA, and the DHS I&A supporting counterintelligence including supporting law enforcement investigations.

The USIC (United States Intelligence Community) has developed the Hammer and Scorecard tools, which were released by WikiLeaks and independently confirmed by Lt. General Thomas McInerney (US Air Force retired), Kirk Wiebe, former NSA official and Dennis Montgomery, former CIA analyst. The Hammer and Scorecard capabilities are tradecrafts used by the US intelligence analysts to conduct MITM (man in the middle attacks) on foreign voting systems, including the Dominion Voting System (DVS) Democracy Suite, and Systems and Software ES&S voting machines without leaving an electronic footprint. As such, these tools are used by nefarious operators to influence voting systems by covertly accessing DVS and altering the results in real time and without leaving an electronic footprint. The DVS Democracy Suite Election Management System (EMS) consists of a set of applications that perform pre-voting and post voting activities.

I have performed forensic analysis of electronic voting systems, including the DVS Democracy Suite, ES&S (acquired by DVS), Scytl/SOE Software, and Smartmatic systems used in hundreds of precincts in key battleground states. I have previously discovered major exploitable vulnerabilities in DVS and ES&S that permit a nefarious operator to perform sensitive functions via its built-in covert back door. The back door enables an operator access to perform system updates and testing via the Internet without detection. However, it can also be used to conduct illicit activities such as shifting votes, deleting votes, or adding votes in real time. (Source: DVS Democracy Suite EMS Manuel, version 5.11-CO::7, P. 43). These events can take place through the Internet and without leaving a trace.

In my expert opinion, the combination of DVS, Scytl/SOE Software/eCarity and Smartmatic are vulnerable to data manipulation by unauthorized means. My judgment is based on conducting more than a dozen experiments combined with analyzing the 2020 election data sets. Additionally, a number of investigators have examined DVS and reported their security findings (J. Schwartz, Scientific American Journal, 2018; DEFCON 2019; L. Norden et al., America’s Voting Machines at Risk, Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law, 2014) confirming that electronic voting machines, including DVS have glaring security weaknesses that have remained unresolved.

I conclude with high confidence that the election 2020 data were altered in all battleground states resulting in hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast for President Trump to be transferred to Vice President Biden. These alterations were the result of systemic and widespread exploitable vulnerabilities in DVS Scytl/SOE Software and Smartmatic systems that enabled operators to achieve the desired results. In my view the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Pursuant to 28 U.S.S. 1746, I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.” [xvi]

So then, how can Secretary of State Wes Allen and John Merrill claim the Alabama election system is secure when the machines contain Chinese hardware in them?

Not A New Problem

This is not a new problem. When I confronted former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill at the Lee County Republican meeting in October of 2024 the county chairman abruptly ended the meeting and the question-and-answer session. I called Merrill out for his mockery of paper ballots and lies about our elections being secure. Afterwards, I heard Merrill tell a man that “…nobody cared about this until 2020.” But he was wrong about that too.

As I mentioned earlier, the book Black Box Voting by Bev Harris was written in 2004. It contains documented evidence of the problems with voting machines going back into the 1990s. Chapter two opens with this incident that was also detailed in the documentary Atticus V. The Architect…

“In the Alabama 2002 general election, machines made by Election Systems and Software (ES&S) flipped the governor’s race. Six thousand three hundred Baldwin County electronic votes mysteriously disappeared after the polls had closed and everyone had gone home. Democrat Don Siegelman’s victory was handed to Republican Bob Riley, and the recount Siegelman requested was denied. Six months after the election, the vendor shrugged. ‘Something happened. I don’t have enough intelligence to say exactly what,’ said Mark Kelley of ES&S” (Mobile Register, 28 January 2003; “Voting Snafu Answers Elusive”).

“In the November 2002 general election in Scurry County, Texas, poll workers got suspicious about a landslide victory for two Republican commissioner candidates. Told that a ‘bad chip’ was to blame, they had a new computer chip flown in and counted the votes by hand — and found out that Democrats actually had won by wide margins, overturning the election.”

“In November 2002, a voting machine was caught double-counting votes in South Dakota. The error was blamed on a “flawed chip.” ES&S sent a replacement chip; voters demanded that the original chip be impounded and examined. Who was allowed to examine it? Citizens? (No.) Experts that we choose? (No.) ES&S? (That’s it.)” (NPR: Morning Edition, 6 November 2002; “Analysis: Senate races in Minnesota and South Dakota”).

“According to The Wall Street Journal, in the 2000 general election an optical-scan machine in Allamakee County, Iowa, was fed 300 ballots and reported 4 million votes. The county auditor tried the machine again but got the same result. Eventually, the machine’s manufacturer, ES&S, agreed to have replacement equipment sent. Republicans had hoped that the tiny but heavily Republican County would tip the scales in George W. Bush’s favor but tipping it by almost four million votes attracted national attention. ‘We don’t have four million voters in the state of Iowa,’ said Bill Roe Jr., county auditor. Todd Urosevich of ES&S said, “You are going to have some failures.”

No one will ever know whether the Maryland machines counted correctly because the new Diebold touch-screen system is un-auditable. Tom Eschberger became a vice president of ES&S not long after he accepted an immunity deal for cooperating with prosecutors in a case against Arkansas Secretary of State Bill McCuen, who pleaded guilty to taking kickbacks and bribes in a scheme related to computerized voting systems. Eschberger reported that a test conducted on a malfunctioning machine and its software in the 1998 general election in Honolulu, Hawaii, showed the machine worked normally. He said the company did not know that the machine wasn’t functioning properly until the Supreme Court ordered a recount, when a second test on the same machine detected that it wasn’t counting properly.

In Union County, Florida, a programming error caused machines to read 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirely Republican in the September 2002 election. The vendor, ES&S, accepted responsibility for the programming error and paid for a hand recount. Unlike the new touch-screen systems, which eliminate voter-verified paper ballots, Union County retained a paper ballot. Thus, a recount was possible and Democratic votes could be identified.

In Atlanta, Georgia, a software programming error caused some votes for Sharon Cooper, considered a “liberal Republican candidate,” not to register in the July 1998 election. Cooper was running against conservative Republican Richard Daniel. According to news reports, the problem required “on-the-spot reprogramming.” How can computerized vote-counting possibly be considered secure from tampering when “on-the-spot reprogramming” can be used to alter vote totals?[xvii]

An article in the Columbia Daily revealed that... “Back in 2004, CEO Walden O’Dell of Diebold (voting machine company) made the mistake of publicly promising to “deliver Ohio to Bush.” Bush won that controversial upset victory — then it was discovered that voting machine fraud had occurred. Two of the election officials were convicted of rigging the Ohio recount.” [xviii]

In 2006, the documentary “Hacking Democracy” was nominated for an Emmy award for Outstanding Long Form Investigative Journalism. As previously mentioned, computer programmer Clint Curtis was hired by Congressman Tom Feeney to construct prototype software to rig elections. He testified to his role in the sordid affair under oath to U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio. The Hacking Democracy documentary revealed multiple ways to easily tamper with the machines, the most famous one being the “Hursti Hack” wherein votes were subtracted from the totals instead of being added. That was accomplished by switching out memory cards to the machines.

In 2008, it was discovered that the AVS WinVote machines used in Virginia, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania could easily be hacked from the parking lot outside the polling location. The passwords to gain access to the machines included such horribly complicated and impenetrable examples such as “abcde” and “admin.” Computer scientists at SRI International published a damning study of the machines and pushed for a formal state inquiry.

In South Carolina back in 2010, it was discovered that the ES&S iVotronic Touchscreen machines had mysteriously “flipped” votes for Jim DeMint to Alvin Greene all day long. The obviously rigged machines resulted in a documentary on that Senate race — “I Voted?” (http://ivotedmovie.com/).

In 2014 in Anne Arundel County in Maryland, it was discovered that Diebold machines were switching votes for a Republican candidate to his Democratic opponent. Everything had to be cancelled with the voters starting all over again. The election director called it a “calibration error.” Software developer Tony Heller stated “It’s a software issue, and its incredibly suspicious that a bug like that could slip through accidently. It defies belief.”

That brings us up to January of 2016 in an article entitled, “Will the 2016 Primaries Be Electronically Rigged?” by Victoria Collier. Professors at Princeton examined the Diebold Accuvote-TS Touchscreen machines and found that “malicious software running on a single voting machine installed in as little as one minute, spreading invisibly from machine to machine through a virus, while stealing votes with little risk of detection’ was easily possible. Many of these machines are running Windows XP — and there hasn’t been any type of security patch for these since April of 2014.” [xix]

President Trump’s Agenda

On Friday February 21, 2025, President Trump was addressing a gathering of Governors and said, “One other thing…just before we leave. I think you should do this…for Safety and Security and for the good of our nation. You should do it anyway regardless even if it costs 10 times more, but it actually cost you just a tiny fraction if you went to paper ballots. I would hope that every Republican (Governor) would. It costs exactly 8% of what the machines cost. These machines…they got something going. So, paper ballots and paper is very sophisticated today…it's called Watermark and it's impossible to copy and impossible to cheat. It's actually hard to believe that a piece of paper is highly sophisticated, but it's Watermark an it's a very amazing…you can't cheat.

If you went to paper ballots and same day voting and if you went to voter ID and also one other thing you want a proof of (citizen) citizenship. Those four things: 1) proof of citizenship, 2) voter ID 3) paper ballots 4) one day voting and if you went to two-day voting or three-day voting. For the security, safety of our country, and our Constitution, you'd have a much safer election number everybody would know the results of your election by 10:00PM. It’s a beautiful system. It's boxes of 5,000, boom boom, and you can go and exam in each box. It's so simple and so good.

I did ask Elon because he knows more about computers than anybody and I said, “What do you think of the voting system?” And he said, “Computers are not meant for voting. It's just not good. It's too many transactions taking place too quickly it's just not.” He said, “Honestly and I've gone to the best people the smartest computer Minds from MIT from others (my uncle was a professor for 41 years at MIT and a brilliant guy) and they will tell you that the most secure way that you can secure the election and probably the fastest way (because there can be very little Hanky Panky) is paper ballots.” [xx]

After that, President Trump started talking about France going back to paper ballots and how they hand count 39 million votes by the end of election night. I shared previously, France does indeed hand count nearly 40 million paper ballots in one evening with public witnesses so there can be no doubt about the accuracy and security of their elections. Canada does it. Germany does it. Alabama can do it!

Some courageous, conservative Republicans in the state of Wyoming put forth a bill to get rid of all electronic voting equipment and go to hand counting. It was a great bill, but the RINO Republicans in their legislature would not let it out of their committees. Typical RINO move. The good news is that a Texas GOP Congressman has drafted a bill to get rid of the voting machines. “The Gateway Pundit has obtained a draft copy of the Make Elections Secure Act (MESA), authored by Representative Pete Sessions (TX-17), which would repeal the outdated Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.

Among other things, it would also almost entirely eliminate electronic voting machines and ensure each voter casts their ballot on a hand-marked paper ballot with a manual hand-count. Exceptions for machine use would be permitted for voters requiring accessibility accommodations due to disabilities.

President Trump’s call to his cabinet and to the governors across the USA to make elections secure again! Paper ballots, no mail out, voter ID, shorter voting periods. #MESA #ARPX pic.twitter.com/nfJt0jVVXj

— COL Conrad Reynolds (@ColonelReynolds) February 27, 2025.” [xxi]

Alabama Deserves Better

We have seen evidence that even if the voting machines and laptops in Alabama did not have a wireless card that connects to the internet, a tiny chip hidden within the system is all that is needed to change the outcome of an election. The cost analysis for switching to paper ballots and hand counting shows an estimated savings of $34 million per midterm and Presidential election cycle. The people of Alabama deserve to have their vote counted in the most secure, transparent, cost-effective way.

I agree with President Trump. Paper ballots and hand counting are the ONLY way we can truly secure our elections at every level. Any legislator/politician who is against this crucial change to protect the votes of Alabamians is either ignorant or part of the corruption. I was recently told by someone that we need to take what we can get concerning election integrity bills. Why do we have to settle for crumbs in a red state? Why are our “conservative” Republican legislators focusing on gun control and expanding gambling while they ignore the corruption in our elections?

As I stated in the beginning, Debbie Wood’s HB30 is a danger to TRUE election integrity (whether she realizes it or not). It is a red herring bill that will allow Republicans to pat themselves on the back and claim they fought for election integrity. I will not relent until we pass a TRUE election integrity bill that gets rid of these compromised voting machines and moves us to secure paper ballots, hand counting, and real transparency.

Please contact Secretary of State Wes Allen at (334)242-5899 and your legislators (https://alison.legislature.state.al.us/house-leaders-members?tab=1) and let them know that Alabama stands with President Trump, getting rid of the voting machines, paper ballots and hand counting!

[i] https://www.c-span.org/program/house-committee/2020-election-security/539096

[ii] https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/703736/chinese-parts-in-voting-machines-trigger-alarms-on-capitol-hill

[iii] https://www.westernjournal.com/arizona-lawmakers-introduce-legislation-end-use-voting-machines-foreign-components/

[iv] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1104516

[v] https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article24530650.html

[vi] https://1819news.com/news/item/black-box-voting-confessions-of-an-elections-hacker-part-2

[viii] https://www.cbs42.com/news/local/john-merrill-the-security-of-elections-in-alabama-is-not-in-question/

[ix] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaAQnjiFUkU

[x] Early signs of a US government hack emerged months ago but were inconclusive | CNN Politics

[xi] Hanes v. Merrill https://alabamalawandliberty.org/hanes-v-merrill/

[xii] https://www.westernjournal.com/germany-refuses-use-voting-machines-like-us-fears-fraud-will-use-paper-ballots/

[xiii] https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-france-elections-europe-96859198666d51b2c4482c3cdb0eb6aa