How do we have reliable elections?

 

 

Philosophy

Here is a quote from well-known attorney Sidney Powell, a determined proponent of reliable elections:

 

"We will not have reliable elections in America until there are no computers used to vote."

 

I think her argument is accepted by many, but I believe it has serious problems. I fear that this focus on paper ballots is more of a kind of nostalgia for what used to work, rather than what would really be best to use in the future.  I don't think purely looking backwards is going to give us the answer we need.

            Lots of people are willing to quote Stalin who said something to the effect that the most important part of voting is the question of who gets to count the votes.  Obviously, as we have seen in 2020, whoever counts the votes can engage in massive fraud by adding or deleting millions of votes to get the result they want.  It would not do us much good to work very hard to get a paper-only election system, only to have it completely stolen by fraudsters again as they did in 2020.

            It seems to me that the real issue is "Who is counting the votes?"  In 2020, the real vote counter was the Dominion voting system people, aided by Facebook and others.  They made it possible for international interference to change and juggle votes according to their plan.

            We also had the situation in several states where the Facebook contribution of at least $400 million was used to basically take over the voting process to make sure that those who were counting the votes were good faithful leftists who would reliably cheat as much as necessary.

            The lesson I take from this is not that paper ballots are necessarily any better than electronic ballots, but that one of the major tricks of the political left in 2020, in many cases, was to move the control of the voting away from regular state voting to be mostly controlled by outsiders. In doing so, they may have inadvertently shown us the best way to solve the problem in the long term.

            Another major issue here is that it seems absurd that a government should be the body that counts the votes that determine who will run the government.  If that is not a massive conflict of interest, I don't know what is.  We often talk about the benefits of incumbency helping those who are in office to stay in office, and it's hard to see what greater benefit of incumbency there might be than being able to count the votes that determine whether they stay in office or not.

            In other words, it appears to me that the main strategic line of thinking ought to be to get the voting separated from the corrupt and self-interested government units and into the hands of a trusted outside party.  (Is it really time for UN observers, we might wonder?) Anyone could have predicted that the corrupt machine politics in big cities like Philadelphia or Chicago would have total control of the voting outcome, even adding votes in their jurisdiction as needed to overwhelm votes in other counties in the same state. In other words, one strategy would be to directly replace Dominion with a competing line of computers and systems that use identification and verification techniques that make it extremely difficult to change any votes, or to delete any votes, or to add any unauthorized votes.

            It might be useful to devise a study as to whether it is better to have paper votes and let the government "count" them, or to simply get the whole voting process out of the grip of the fanatically self-interested government bureaucrats.  I'm going to guess that the only way to actually ever get a clean election is to have it done outside of government control where pure processing and auditing competency is in control, rather than inside where naked politics are in control of everything. (We might think of a process like voluntary arbitration proceedings where the advocates for each side choose a third party [a judge] to make sure that the arbitration process is fair.)

            As I discuss below, although computers can be used for cheating on a grand scale as was done in 2020, computers can also be used to make cheating almost impossible.  A brief description of my solution for the "cheating is almost impossible" option is described below.

            I can imagine why non-computer-savvy lawyers would like to get rid of computers and go back to the "good old days" of totally paper ballots, but I fear that is an unnecessarily limited approach.  I earned two law degrees, and then spent most of my working life as a computer consultant, so I can claim to know something about both sides of this solution discussion.  I'm inclined to believe that the use of computers to prevent cheating can be used so powerfully that it should greatly surpass the "paper-only" option which has become the nostalgic favorite solution, it seems.  It may be that only a serious test case will make it easy for this argument to be settled to everyone's satisfaction.  In my opinion, the sooner we can run a test or simulation and make a decision, the better.  I have an intuitive feeling that this "paper-only" option is simply never going to be acceptable in the computer age, and if we do manage a "paper-only" option, the determined fraudsters will still find a way to cheat just as much as they have in the past.

            As a final argument in favor of trying to use computers to enhance security (rather than to obliterate security, as was done in the 2020 election), perhaps if we propose a serious replacement computer option which makes cheating almost impossible, the lunatic left will actually agree to a paper-only system as a fallback position or compromise, since they would see that as the best way to continue to maximize fraud opportunities, rather than be constrained by a rigidly accurate computerized system.

 

Technology

Use computers as a strong, thick shield to counter computers used as a dangerous weapon.

 

Using GPS and QR Codes to Run a Precise Election and Audit

while thoroughly auditing every step in the process,

continuously and periodically,

with a final audit result within hours of the end of the voting cycle

The November 3, 2020 election was stolen using local computers, international computers, the Internet, national and international cheating money, and hiring partisan vote processors who would gladly break all the rules to win for their party. Summing up all the ways to cheat in voting processes, as especially seen in all of the swing states, but also in all 50 states, we have now clearly documented that there are probably at least 200 ways to cheat the typical voting system as it now exists. By countering all of these computer, personnel, and processing cheats by installing a complete new voting system using relatively new but already thoroughly tested computing techniques, every one of those 200 ways to cheat can be thwarted, and an actual verifiably fair election can be conducted.
            Using GPS techniques, all potential voters can be located unequivocally on the map, with all anomalies easily and quickly noted and investigated, and then their location and all other pertinent identifying data can be included in a single QR code, a precise identification replacement for the old signature method, where that minimal signature method can be made almost meaningless today by simply ignoring it. The combination of these two techniques, along with some verification work by volunteer investigators and canvassers, should allow a 99% accuracy rate for voting outcomes. Blockchain secure data storage techniques might even have a place in the final solution, since the fraudsters commonly delete masses of data to hide and protect their cheating activities.
            Obviously, the political left wants to maximize the cheating opportunities, and they would really hate this "big brother" computer system thwarting them. But the left also loves their own numerous "big brother" surveillance systems, so they would find it hard to complain about using another "big brother" system to increase voting accuracy. "Turnabout is fair play" so that if we have "big brother versus big brother," and a "battle of the computers," we might come out with neutral and accurate results.
            Mark Zuckerberg has invented the anti-privacy surveillance system called Facebook.  He has invented the outsourced voting process, as in Minnesota and several other states.  The Chinese government and their allies in the United States, including the CIA, have invented the international vote-stealing system. Perhaps a US entrepreneur can develop and promote a reliable voting system that can be tested in mostly-honest red states and then gradually be moved into totally dishonest blue states, one county at a time, through shaming and popular demand.

 

Politics

The 2020 election demonstrated that many legislatures, perhaps most, do not have adequate control of subunits within their own state government, such as the rebellious Maricopa County in Arizona. Those units disregard state law with impunity. Perhaps that means that it will never be possible for legislatures to get proper control of their internal voting processes. Perhaps legislatures could take a completely different approach, as hinted at by the situation in Arizona. I believe it was about $700 million that was threatened to be withheld from Maricopa County for their misbehavior, if they did not comply with audit requests. Perhaps a better solution would be simply to outsource the entire voting process to an outside unit, introducing competition and greater efficiency and accuracy. The legislative could change the budget so that the counties did not receive the money to run voting operations, but instead the necessary money might be redirected to outside organizations that are specialized in secure voting operations. Those organizations might sell "voting insurance" or guarantees that the voting processes they conduct will be demonstrably accurate. Obviously, in order to fulfill that insured promise of accuracy, they will have to conduct or closely monitor all necessary basic processes and auditing processes.

            As suggested above, it is absurd that any government organization in America gets to determine completely by itself which of its officers will be elected or reelected. American governments were never intended to have hereditary or entitled leaders. That critical voting process needs to be done completely outside of government. In the 2020 election, huge amounts of government voting processes were indeed outsourced to Dominion, and to Facebook, and other entities, so that the results could be modified to meet leftist plans. By the same logic, those voting operations could also be outsourced in the future, but actually go to a trusted professional organization. As many have noted, we don't really have these kinds of organizations, but it is time to create them. We need a new voting industry, held to the high performance standards of our private military contractors. We can't let jet fighters crash or voting processes fail.

 

More details are available, if requested.

 

Kent Huff

kent.huff@gmail.com, Cell: 801-615-9032
139 West 1720 North, Orem, Utah  84057
Computer consultant, author, attorney

Sample graphics to instantly show status of potential voters and any problems.