OSET Institute

‎Dead Men Don't Vote: David Levine - Election Integrity Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy on Apple Podcasts ‎Show Dead Men Don't Vote, Ep David Levine - Election Integrity Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy - Mar 22, 2023

Drop (finally): our latest podcast episode (outside of our news recaps). This one is a big deal. OSET's COO and our co-hosts sit down with two commissioners of the EAC for a look back at the '22 midterms and a look-ahead to 2024.
https://trustthevote.org/podcast/a-conversation-with-eac-commissioners/

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My colleagues reminded me to share that Part-2 of my "Game of Margins" article is now posted on the mildly hot mess of Georgia (which now, while irrelevant to the outcome of the presidential election, can be informative for things to come in the Jan 5th runoff senatorial elections). See it here:

Game of Margins—Part II Following our previous post about the recount process in general, and in particular what it normally would mean in Georgia, this article is an “explainer” on the effort begun recently to “audit” th…

NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt featured an important segment tonight with Cynthia McFadden on the 2020 election and the absence of evidence of irregularities. Our Director of Technology & Open Standards, Eddie Perez is predominantly featured:

Homeland Security says no evidence as Trump and allies push voter fraud claims NBC News has spoken to more than a dozen state election officials across the country, Republicans and Democrats alike, who say there is no evidence backing up President Trump’s claims of wide-scale fraud or mistakes that would change state outcomes.

Great article in Politifact today that straightens out the Dominion voting machine allegations. Eddie Perez, OSET Institute Global Director of Technology & Standards is quoted significantly in the article due to his subject matter expertise...

Election technology experts called the claims baseless, and said the numbers (like Trump’s 2.7 million "deleted" votes) are almost impossible to prove without a digital forensic investigation and a nationwide audit.

Edward Perez, election-technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit that studies voting infrastructure, said these claims show a misunderstanding of how election administration works.
"The process involves numerous protocols that include rigorous system tests that take place publicly, and before the technology is used in elections," Perez said.

"Without any credible evidence that the voting system is resulting in mass tabulation errors," Perez said, the posts and stories appear to border on outright disinformation.

"The claims have reached a scale that is so wild and outlandish that it is perfectly reasonable for people to wonder if the intent of such messages is to specifically inflame passions and to confuse people and undermine public confidence in the legitimacy of the election."

The article can be seen here:

PolitiFact - No evidence Dominion Voting Systems caused widespread tabulation errors that flipped votes for Biden PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others on its Truth-O-Meter.

A poster asked us last evening (Nov 12) a fair question: Just curious how a member of your team can ascertain there is disinformation and misinformation about potential glitches within Dominion’s voting technolgy all because they aren’t aware? This sounds hypocritical. Is it misinformation if I said that I went to work today all because Edward Perez isn’t aware if I went?

ANSWER

Hi Jay- Thanks for your fair question. Our Institute, some 70 people strong with a dozen election technology experts (i.e., more than 15 years experience) are deeply versed in the technology of the three voting systems vendors. Add in another approximately dozen professionals with extensive election administration experience (i.e., processes, procedures, policies), and finally an 8 person legal team knowledgeable of election law. Our work includes understanding state-by-state the practices, processes, and technology of election administration. We are very familiar with Dominion technology and in fact, have contributed subject matter expertise to litigation in Georgia over this machinery. So, when Eddie, who is one of our top election technology experts (having spent over 15 years at one of the 3 vendors) asserts that allegations and claims being raised about Dominion and potential "glitches" on a scaled basis are unlikely, honestly, Jay, he is in a really good position to have firsthand knowledge. That noted, let us add some additional points out of intellectual honesty. 1) Glitches are real; they happen. Like with any device, as you well know, errors, bugs, and malfunctions occur. And on a national scale with Dominion equipment in service in 29 states, the potential for what *appears* to be widespread issues may be true on the one hand, but on the other (and this is the key) to assert that they are part of a coordinated, intentional, or contrived set of events is near folly, and here's why. 2) In order to ascertain something like that really happened would require a digital forensic analysis of the equipment -- that certainly can happen, but it absolutely did not in this case because to stage that kind of wide scale "audit" of machinery would require coordination and efforts that would have been very public, and because we have individuals on our team working with the national security apparatus, we can assure you, we would've known about such an effort. So that is how we (in this case Eddie) can make the assertions he did. Thank you for your inquiry Jay! Stay safe.

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They're called best practices for a reason.
https://bit.ly/3866wgC

Iowa Election Snafu: What Happens When IT And Cybersecurity Best Practices Are Ignored The failure of a mobile app that disrupted the Iowa Democratic caucuses was really management's failure to ensure that the app adhered to IT and cybersecurity best practices and standards.