Voting machine in elections have created problems for honest elections in that the source code used to run the machines is not available for inspection.  As a consequence, anything can be in the software such as fractional vote counting where the machine is programmed to give candidates other than 0 or 1 vote.  Because of this the machine can be programmed to be biased for a preferred candidate, and operators and voters will not know the difference.  Machines are also hooked up to the internet or a thumb-drive as a minimum when summarizing and reporting votes.  Some machines have WiFi cards built in and can be connected whenever they are programmed to connect, even while voting is happening.  While hooked to the internet, the machines are vulnerable to being hacked and the votes being altered.  Some machines have USB ports on them which can be accessed by thumb drives that contain software that can alter the computer software.  Voting machines have administrative accounts on them to allow administrators to install and configure election software.  The security on these administrative accounts is poor, apparently by design.  It is easy for hackers to access these accounts and have access to administrative level privileges over the voting software and data.  Computers are so versatile and election security is so poor that it is easy for an election manager to find ways to alter the vote.  For example, in Maricopa County, AZ in 2022 the election administrator printed ballots formatted for 19 inch paper on 20 inch paper.  The scanners that scanned the ballots and counted them were set up to read ballots on 20 inch paper, and the scanners had trouble reading the ballots formatted for 19 inch paper, and the scanners rejected half of the ballots, thus creating long lines and unread ballots that disenfranchised many voters.  Many other things can be done with computers such as counting fractional votes, creating fake paper copies of votes while actually counting different data, and allowing remote access to manipulate ballots in real time.  There were tests run back in the '70s on voting machine security that uncovered many of the same flaws with election computers that we experience today.  Rather than trying to honestly fix machine vulnerabilities and ensuring an honest elections, the vulnerabilities have been exploited and made worse.  Since a computer can be made to do about anything, without the most stringent controls and software audits, there can never be completely honest elections.  Since vendors will not allow software audits of their "proprietary software", and computers are vulnerable to hacking in so many ways, we can never guarantee free and fair elections with computers, so voting machines should be removed completely and we should return to paper ballots, even if it costs more.

James Johnson

Capt. Seth Keshel

1 Jan 2023

           New beginnings bring new goals.  Those goals, if in the form of New Year’s Resolutions, often bring about crowded gyms and more shopping around the edges of the grocery stores, if only for a little while.  Goals can be intimidating and impose a degree of responsibility upon the goal-setter that may be uncomfortable once reality sets in.

            In that event, it is always safe to settle for making predictions.  If you’re right, like when I called the 2016 election perfectly in every state, you can talk about it forever.  Without further ado, here are my Top 10 Predictions for 2023:

I.               Election Integrity is and will Remain King

Regardless of how “under control” GOP legislatures think their state is when it comes to elections, nothing could be further from the truth.  The miserable failure of the 2022 midterm only exacerbated the anger Americans felt after President Trump was wrongfully deprived of a second term just two short years ago.

Kari Lake’s slam-dunk case that was carelessly punted by a Maricopa County judge has only fueled the fire and rightly pissed off not only every patriot who has paid attention for the past two years, but now every rank and file Republican who has kicked the tires as to whether he or she should believe the so-called election deniers who have permeated their ranks one county party at a time.

My own “Four for the Core” county-level engagement plan has already garnered responses from patriots in more than one-eighth of county equivalents in the United States and underscores just how critical the elections issue is.  If it is not fixed, we have no country, and no control over who it is who represents “We the People.”

II.             Florida will Overtake Texas as the King Republican State

In 2012, Mitt Romney won Texas by 1.26 million votes, and lost Florida by 74,000, making the two states 1.3 million votes apart from a Republican perspective.  In 2016, that last number tightened to 694,000, with Texas being won by Trump by a much narrower margin than in 2012, and Florida flipping.

In 2020, thanks to the massive election manipulation across the country and particularly in Texas, the two states were just 250,000 votes apart, with both sending Republican electors to the electoral college.  However, Texas was the ninth closest state overall, and voted left of Ohio for the first time since 1976.  Since Texas has done very little to shore up elections since 2020, and Florida has made some meaningful reforms (including making ballot harvesting a felony and the creation of an election crimes department), it is not a reach to anticipate that Florida, now with 30 electoral votes, will be won by the Republican nominee, presumably Donald Trump, by more votes and a larger margin than Texas, now with 40 electoral votes, will be.

Even Florida’s urban counties are taking a right turn, with few exceptions.  The opposite is happening in Texas, where Austin, Houston, and Dallas are spilling over and contaminating adjacent counties, weakening their Republican margins, and thus, their reliability for electing local Republican governments and sending Republican representation to Austin.

https://skeshel.substack.com/p/ten-bold-predictions-for-2023

Capt. Seth Keshel,

1 Jan 2023

Election fraud, at least until now, has masked the truth of how society feels about the tinpot bureaucrats who are wrecking one county or state at a time.  Since Elon Musk began the radical transformation of how Twitter conducts its operations, dissident comments on pages belonging to political criminals like Katie Hobbs are no longer scrubbed and censored and paint a much different reactionary picture than we are led to believe by fake polling and “news” coverage. 

The success of states like Florida, which has long disregarded the virtue signaling ways of other states along the eastern seaboard, has become obvious and undeniable, and appeals to far more than the standard suburban Republican voter base of the past four decades.  As the U.S. government continues to tighten the screws on everyday Americans, with enough cash to send by the tens of billions to Ukraine, and its officials live a life of largesse, resentment with the “ruling class” will grow, and every form of virtue signaling will be soundly mocked and rejected, and rightfully so. [more...]

https://skeshel.substack.com/p/ten-bold-predictions-for-2023

The Georgia Supreme Court has reinstated a case involving VoterGA and Fulton County, Georgia.  VoterGA sued to gain access to view Fulton County's absentee ballots for the November 2020 election.  Fulton County has been served with a preservation order, so the ballots should still exist.  Even if by some miracle Fulton County actually allowed access to the ballots, and the VoterGA found 300,000 uncounted ballots for President Trump, the response to patriot victories in other places has pretty much been, "Well, we will try to take care of it in the next next election", so the perps maintain control of the voting process, nothing is done, and there is no way for the voters to clean up the election process.  It is pretty clear the system can no longer correct itself.

Carmine Sabia [Abridged]

Conservative Brief

December 20, 2022

The new Twitter files have shown more information that links the FBI to Twitter executives. A new batch of “Twitter Files” showed that messages were sent on Teleporter, which is a one-way communications platform where the FBI sends messages to Twitter, by FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan prior to the Hunter Biden laptop story being buried.

The message was sent to the man who was Twitter’s head of site integrity, Yoel Roth. And it came hours after Hunter Biden’s attorney, George Mesires, contacted Delaware computer store owner, John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac, who had Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate,” reporter Michael Shellenberger said.

The reporter said that those researching the Twitter files have found evidence of “an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms.”

“During all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation,” he said.

And there was no evidence that any of it was based on new evidence of Russian interference.

“Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel? No, they weren’t ‘Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,’ admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in Nov,” he said.

“Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity. E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 ‘largely inactive’ accounts ‘linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.’ They ‘had little reach & low follower accounts,’” he said.

“After FBI asks about a WaPo story on alleged foreign influence in a pro-Trump tweet, Twitter’s Roth says, ‘The article makes a lot of insinuations… but we saw no evidence that that was the case here (and in fact, a lot of strong evidence pointing in the other direction),’” the reporter said.

https://conservativebrief.com/communicating-69284/

Martin Walsh [Abridged]

Conservative Brief

December 20, 2022

Republican Kari Lake’s election challenge to the Arizona gubernatorial race will head to trial after a judge declined to dismiss her lawsuit and allowed the suit to proceed.

“Katie Hobbs attempt to have our case thrown out FAILED. She will have to take the stand & testify. Buckle up, America. This is far from over,” Lake tweeted after the order came down.

Last week, a judge in Arizona gave her a win over the declared winner in the race, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. On Friday, the Maricopa County judge granted Lake’s request to inspect ballots as her legal contesting of the November election continues. Judge Peter Thompson signed off on three out of four requests made by Lake via her legal team to review 50 random “ballot on demand” printed ballots cast on Election Day, as well as another 50 early ballots cast from “six separate Maricopa County batches,” and another 50 random ballot-on-demand printed ballots that were marked as spoiled.

However, Thompson rejected a request from Lake to inspect 50 randomly selected early ballot envelopes.

The ballot inspections are to commence on Tuesday.

Lake has yet to concede to Hobbs, though state officials, including her own office, have certified her as the winner.

“I am thankful to Judge Peter Thompson and his team for the work they do and we are confident that given the opportunity, we will expose this election for the sham it was,” Lake said in a statement.

Andy Gaona, who represented the Secretary of State’s Office, asked the judge on Tuesday to keep the case on a short schedule in hopes that it will be dismissed quickly.

“Essentially a one-day hearing should give the plaintiffs the opportunity to make whatever case they believe they have, a case we believe is nonexistent,” Gaona said during Tuesday’s virtual hearing.

Gaona told the judge that Hobbs is set to be sworn in as governor in early January and that allowing the lawsuit to run too long will disrupt the peaceful transition of power. Arizona’s current GOP Gov. Doug Ducey has been term-limited.

Bryan Blehm, an attorney representing Lake, asked the judge for more time to work through arguments.

“This is a pretty significant factual hearing, your honor,” Blehm said.

“Judge Peter Thompson said he did have some concerns about timing. He scheduled two hours on Monday for oral arguments for the motions to dismiss and set a two-day hearing scheduled for later next week. There appears to be major interest in the case. Tuesday’s hearing was delayed by about half an hour because so many members of the public were trying to log into the virtual courtroom,” KJZZ reported.

Maricopa County spokesman Fields Moseley said that the courts are the appropriate place to handle such claims and that Maricopa’s election division “looks forward to sharing facts about the administration of the 2022 General Election and our work to ensure every legal voter had an opportunity to cast their ballot,” Reuters reported.

“We’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to. We will not stop fighting,” she said.

U.S. District Judge John Tuchi of the District of Arizona rejected a Lake lawsuit earlier this year and then moved to fine her attorneys and those of Republican Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem last week.

“Imposing sanctions, in this case, is not to ignore the importance of putting in place procedures to ensure that our elections are secure and reliable,” Tuchi wrote in his order. “It is to make clear that the Court will not condone litigants ignoring the steps that Arizona has already taken toward this end and furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust at a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process.

https://conservativebrief.com/arizona-judge-69276/

Liz Harrington [Edited]

“The number of illegal votes cast in Arizona’s general election on November 8, 2022 far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin…

“Witnesses who were present…show hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election in Maricopa County.”

Kari Lake filed suit against the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, Katie Hobbs and others.  Lake's lawyers wrote, “This case is about restoring trust in the election process — a trust that Maricopa County election officials and Hobbs have shattered.”

According to a Cyber expert who worked for nine years for same lab that certified Maricopa machines: “Machine failures Arizona voters experienced on Election Day could not have occurred absent intentional misconduct.”

Conservatively, between 15,603 and 29,257 Republican voters were disenfranchised because of the machines. Election observers said over 300,000 mail-in ballots had no chain of custody, with no way of telling if they are legal ballots. 

Lake's lawsuit states, “Maricopa County elections officials allowed tens of thousands of ballots with signatures mismatches like this one to be counted in 2020. They did the same thing in the 2022 general election.”

“Signature matching” is a joke

In the 2020 review of 230,339 envelopes there were 18,022 “egregious” mismatches, more than entire 10,457 margin and there were signatures that 19,631 failed standards.

Then in 2022 there were 4,328 signatures with the same names of the egregious mismatches that “voted” again! There were 5,289 same names on signatures that had failed standards in 2020 that voted again in 2022!

Whistleblowers commenting on the “deep flaws” with signature matching estimated the number of flawed signatures that were certified to be “tens of thousands of illegal ballots being counted”.

Witness: “The math never added up [while the ballots were counted].”

There were 60,000 signatures processed per day, with 20-30% being rejected, but only 1,000, ONE-TENTH, would be cured, presumably because they voted for the disfavored candidate.

Managers were “reversing and approving [some] signatures” that were rejected and “Most of the work of these level 2 managers was not subject to the accountability of observers.” The rejected ballots sent through processing again were sent because managers wanted them approved.

Some ballots had "Verified" stickers on them.  A Witness said: “There was no way to know who placed ‘verified’ stickers on ballots. The system was wide open to abuse.”

Third-party contractor Star Center cured ballots with no observers present “completely off site”, and they “were not able to see the actual ballot with the signature on it”. Sounds legit!

59% of Maricopa County’s 223 Vote Centers had printer and tabulator failures. This disproportionally affected Election Day voters who went for Kari Lake 3:1.

Some excerpts from texts from computer techs hired by Maricopa County:

_____“I’m having a 911”

_____“Tabulators aren’t reading ballots. It’s maybe 50/50.”

_____“…line around building all day”

Maricopa Board of Supervisors claimed the tabulation issues were fixed by mid-afternoon. Wrong! No fewer than 34 vote centers had tabulator breakdowns after 3 p.m. and throughout the day.

A poll worker testified approximately 175 at his vote center gave up because of the long lines and did not vote. A 68-year-old woman unable to vote for first time since 1981 due to inability to stand in 2-3 hour line on Election Day.

Uncounted “Door 3” ballots (valid ballots that tabulators repeatedly would not read and placed in a bin labeled "Door 3") were co-mingled with already tabulated ballots and probably never counted.  Lake's complaint says, “…There is good reason to believe that the number of Door 3 ballots is far greater” than 16,724 that Maricopa County claims.

.@Peoples_Pundit found Republicans had issues trying to cast a ballot compared to Democrats at a margin of 58.6% to 15.5%. A conservative estimate shows the tabulator breakdowns suppressed Kari Lake’s Election Day vote between 15,603 and 29,257 votes.

A highly qualified cyber expert (Mr. Clay Parikh) who performed security tests for 9 years for the federal Election Assistance Commission for various Secretary of State organizations says voting machine failures can only be categorized as “intentional.” “An unintentional widespread failure of this magnitude occurring could not arise absent intentional misconduct.”

A Runbeck [AZ ballot printing company] whistleblower says 298,942 early ballots had no chain of custody and Maricopa County did not know how many ballots Runbeck received on election night. He said, “The required chain of custody for these ballots does not exist.”

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1601386586964643842.html

Captain Seth Keshel

13 Dec 2022

Lake v. Hobbs, et. al, is a 70-page legal masterpiece outlining brazen criminality that altered the outcomes of the Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and U.S. Senate races in the state, and weakened the Republican majorities of both chambers.  Her case begins, on page 2, by highlighting Rasmussen’s polling that shows 72% of Americans agreeing with Lake’s statement that the election was botched, and voters were disenfranchised.

Above, on page 2, Lake indicates the quantity of illegal votes far surpasses the margin between she and Hobbs.  Not only that, but my analysis suggests roughly 246,628 too many votes were cast in 2022 based on historical turnout, suggesting a comparable amount of corruption as seen in the 2018 midterms.  That means Mark Finchem, Abe Hamadeh, and Blake Masters should have all been winners and begun the process of restoring Arizona to greatness.

Page 2 concludes with what I consider to be the most lethal legal bullet, the disenfranchisement of obvious Republican voters on election day, citing 59% of vote centers experiencing failures in electronic equipment.  Imagine a scenario in which a Republican in Pennsylvania tried to declare victory when 20% of core Philadelphia was not able to vote due to issues at the vote centers.  It would never fly, and everyone knows it.  At the beginning of Page 3, Lake cites Findley v. Sorenson, in that errors in the canvass of an election may void the election entirely.

Above, on page 3, Lake’s case correctly declares the American election crisis is a crisis of transparency, which counts the judiciary as its only hope for remediation.  Hobbs is properly described as a corrupt bureaucrat guilty of colluding with Maricopa County’s own corrupt bureaucrats to destroy the vote in Arizona.

https://skeshel.substack.com/p/a-comprehensive-guide-to-kari-lakes

Analytics 805 founder Thomas Cole told The Arizona Sun Times, “We took the Arizona election numbers and made a chart to visually show the improbability of Kari Lake (R) losing, while the entire state of Arizona voted Republican for the State Senate and U.S. House races. We saw a two-to-one Republican versus Democrat vote in the State Senate races. So it makes no sense to think those Republicans suddenly flipped to Democrat Katie Hobbs for governor by a 25 percent margin.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/breaking-gateway-pundit-right-az-state-officials-find-impossible-variant-election-day-data-25-gop-voters-flipped-votes-top-gop-candidates/

DecentFiJC on Twitter (https://twitter.com/decentfijc/status/1596181850242060288) has released stats on all the Maricopa County precincts where machines failed. Well, it turns out that 93.7% were “Heavy Republican” areas.