USNN2020 - USNN World News - Page 515 of 557

National News

Dominion Software Intentionally Designed to Influence Election Results

by USNN2020December 14, 2020February 24, 2025

Opinion

How an International Election Observer Sees the US 2020 Election

by USNN2020December 14, 2020January 12, 2021

Healthcare

NY Nurse Is First American to Receive COVID-19 Vaccine

by USNN2020December 14, 2020February 18, 2025

A court-sanctioned forensic audit of voting systems in Michigan’s Antrim County determined that crucial security and ballot-adjudication logs were missing from machines by Dominion Voting Systems, the company at the epicenter of the dispute over whether voter fraud occurred during the 2020 general election. The findings are part of a preliminary forensic report (pdf) written by Russell Ramsland, a former Reagan White House official who has worked for NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kevin Elsenheimer, the chief judge of Michigan’s 13th Circuit Court, approved the report for release to the public on Dec. 14. According to the report, both the ballot-adjudication logs and the security logs for the Nov. 3 general election appear to have been removed; logs for prior elections are still present on the machines. “The adjudication process is the simplest way to manually manipulate votes. The lack of records prevents any form of audit accountability, and their conspicuous absence is extremely suspicious since the files exist for previous years using the same software,” Ramsland wrote. “We must conclude that the 2020 election cycle records have been manually removed.” The absence of the adjudication logs is particularly alarming because the forensic exam found that the voting machines rejected an extraordinary number of ballots for adjudication, a manual process in which election workers determine the ultimate outcome for each ballot. The Federal Election Commission allows for an error rate of 0.0008 percent, according to Ramsland. The machines his team examined in Antrim County had an error rate of 68.05 percent, the report states. “Because the intentional high error rate generates large numbers of ballots to be adjudicated by election personnel, we must deduce that bulk adjudication occurred. However, because files and adjudication logs are missing, we have not yet determined where the bulk adjudication occurred or who was responsible for it,” Ramsland said. Michigan Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater, in a court filing, said the report “makes a series of unsupported conclusions, ascribes motives of fraud and obfuscation to processes that are easily explained as routine election procedures or error corrections, and suggests without explanation that elements of election software not used in Michigan are somehow responsible for tabulation or reporting errors that are either nonexistent or easily explained,” the Detroit Free Press reported. Erik Grill, a Michigan assistant attorney general, told the judge on Dec. 14 that Ramsland’s preliminary report was “inaccurate, incomplete, and misleading.” Haider Kazim, an attorney for Antrim County, said the report contained several errors the county believes were based on “faulty assumptions and incorrect assumptions.” Ramsland co-founded and manages the Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), which includes former officials from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and Central Intelligence Agency. The group focuses on cybersecurity and open-source network penetration testing. ASOG examined Dominion products in Antrim County earlier this month as part of a lawsuit stemming from the post-election flipping of roughly 6,000 votes between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. The plaintiff, William Bailey, disputed the official explanation that the votes were shifted due to human error. The ASOG team inspected and performed forensic duplication on the county’s election management server, compact flash cards used by local precincts in their Dominion ImageCast system, memory sticks used by Dominion Voter Assist Terminals, and memory sticks used for the poll book. Security Logs In addition to missing adjudication logs, the examination found that the systems are missing security logs prior to 11 p.m. on Nov. 4. “This means that all security logs for the day after the election, on Election Day, and prior to Election Day are gone. Security logs are very important to an audit trail, forensics, and for detecting advanced persistent threats and outside attacks, especially on systems with outdated system files,” Ramsland said. “These logs would contain domain controls, authentication failures, error codes, times users logged on and off, network connections to file servers between file accesses, internet connections, times, and data transfers. “Other server logs before November 4, 2020, are present; therefore, there is no reasonable explanation for the security logs to be missing.” Evidence Preservation The Amistad Project, an election integrity group, filed evidence preservation requests in five battleground states in response to the findings of the Ramsland report. “We’re filing in all swing states a demand that judges step in and preserve evidence to avoid it from being destroyed or spoiled by the intentional or reckless acts of executive officials,” said Phill Kline, the director of the project. Amistad had previously filed post-election lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. “The error rate detailed in this report has implications for every state where we have litigation, and it comes on a day when officials are blocking legislators from having their say about elections in their states,” Kline said in a statement. “This joins with other compelling evidence that the elections in these states cannot be certified under the law.” Designed to ‘Influence Election Results’ According to Ramsland, the errors unearthed during the forensic exam appear to be a feature, rather than a bug. “The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud,” Ramsland wrote. “Based on our study, we conclude that The Dominion Voting System should not be used in Michigan. We further conclude that the results of Antrim County should not have been certified.” The report was released to the public shortly before presidential electors convened across the nation to formally cast their votes for president and vice president. In Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, presidential electors for Trump cast their votes despite their states having certified the Democratic electors. “WOW. This report shows massive fraud. Election changing result!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Dec. 14. The preliminary report didn’t include the underlying data ASOG examined. Ramsland had previously filed an affidavit with a major error in it as part of an election lawsuit brought by Lin Wood. The affidavit mixed up counties from Minnesota and Michigan. ‘Votes Can Be and Were Changed’ The ASOG team visited Central Lake Township on Nov. 27 to inspect the Dominion ImageCast Precinct system. Central Lake Township Clerk Judith Kosloski presented the auditors with two ballot tabulator tapes, one produced on Nov. 3 and another on Nov. 6. Kosloski told the auditors that Connie Wing of the County Clerk’s Office instructed her on Nov. 5 to retabulate the ballots that were counted on Nov. 3. The second tabulation altered an estimated 1,474 votes in a precinct where a total of 1,494 votes were cast, the auditors estimate. The massive shift included a school board race in which one candidate gained 742 votes and another lost 657 votes, printed tapes provided to the auditors show. In another school board race, 657 votes vanished in a second tabulation of a race that had 663 votes cast on the first count. When the auditors visited the Antrim County Clerk on Dec. 6, they discovered that two different versions of election software were used for the machine that tabulated the Central Lake Township ballots. In total, the use of the two software versions altered more than 60 percent of the votes, “inexplicably impacting every single election contest in a township with less than 1500 voters,” the report states. Zachary Stieber and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

National News

Crucial Logs Missing From Michigan County Dominion Voting Machines: Forensics Report

by USNN2020December 14, 2020February 24, 2025

Opinion

UPDATED: The Tragic Failure of William Barr

by USNN2020December 14, 2020June 20, 2024

National News

US Commerce Confirms It Was Hacked; Treasury Reportedly Breached

by USNN2020December 14, 2020January 12, 2021

National News

Nevada DMV Records Suggest 3,987 Non-Citizens Voted in 2020 Election

by USNN2020December 14, 2020August 25, 2025

Economy

Sanders, Hawley Push for Vote on Second Round of Stimulus Checks

by USNN2020December 14, 2020February 26, 2025

Healthcare

The Latest: 1st Pfizer Vaccine to Arrive in States Monday

by USNN2020December 14, 2020January 12, 2021

National News

US in Middle of ‘Battle of Good vs. Evil’: Michael Flynn

by USNN2020December 13, 2020January 12, 2021

National News

Trump: Barr ‘Had an Obligation to Set the Record Straight’ on Hunter Biden Investigation

by USNN2020December 13, 2020February 24, 2025

National News

Georgia Lawmaker: ‘What They’ve Done Is Awaken a Sleeping Giant’

by USNN2020December 13, 2020January 12, 2021

NATIONAL NEWS

Biden’s Doctor Provides Medical Update

By Jacob Burg President Joe Biden’s White House physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, released a letter on July 18 with an update on the president’s COVID-19 ...

Some States Embrace CO2 Cap-and-Trade Schemes, Others Reject Them

By Kevin Stocklin The United States is following Europe’s lead in instituting cap-and-trade regimes to reduce CO2 emissions, but America’s journey is split between two ...

Vance, Working Class, Gold Star Families Honored: Takeaways From Day 3 of RNC

By Lawrence Wilson, Nathan Worcester and Janice Hisle MILWAUKEE—Vice Presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance headlined Day 3 of the Republican National Convention, presenting former President ...

Melania and Ivanka Trump Will ‘Certainly’ Attend RNC, Eric Trump Says

By Jack Phillips Former President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump confirmed that his stepmother, former First Lady Melania Trump, as well as his sister Ivanka ...

After Injured Trump Arrived at Pennsylvania Hospital, ER Patients Prayed

By Beth Brelje With temperatures in the 90s, an ambulance was making round trips between the July 13 Pennsylvania Trump rally and the Butler Memorial ...

How Congress Is Forced to Adapt Post-Chevron SCOTUS Ruling

By Arjun Singh WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Chevron deference, which had the effect of enhancing federal agency power, has been deemed ...

FBI Gains Access to Suspected Trump Shooter’s Phone

By Zachary Stieber FBI agents have gained access to a phone belonging to Thomas Crooks, the man identified by law enforcement officials as shooting former ...

Judge’s Dismissal of Classified Document Case Against Trump Explained

By Sam Dorman U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Justice Department’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump on July 15, ruling that ...

39 Things to Know About JD Vance, Trump’s Running Mate

By Joseph Lord and Jackson Richman On July 15, former President Donald Trump announced that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) was his vice presidential pick, ending ...

DHS Secretary Mayorkas Confirms RFK Jr. Will Get Secret Service Protection

By Jacob Burg and Jeff Louderback Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, said on July 15 that Secret Service protection will be extended to ...

Trump Secures Republican Presidential Nomination

By Janice Hisle MILWAUKEE—It’s official: Former President Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. The announcement was made almost simultaneously with former President Trump’s ...

Trump Selects JD Vance as Running Mate

By Janice Hisle MILWAUKEE—Former President Donald Trump announced on July 15 that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) will be his running mate, ending months of speculation. The former ...