Election-Security SOS

United Nations Association (Westchester Branch)

By Jennifer Cohn @jennycohn1
September 5, 2019

Introduction

The purpose of this piece is to identify some specific voting system vulnerabilities and obstacles to securing our elections. Other participants will focus on solutions. My own thoughts as to solutions are discussed in a separate piece linked here: https://link.medium.com/53xrp8U2IZ.

I also strongly support the current effort (discussed within) to persuade the House of Representatives to subpoena testimony from the voting machine vendors about ownership and other issues, as fraud loathes transparency.

The centralization of America’s election system.

Just two vendors — Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S) and Dominion Voting — account for eighty percent of US election equipment. Thus, corrupt insiders or foreign hackers could wreak havoc on elections throughout the United States by infiltrating either of these vendors.

Corrupt insiders?

ES&S and Dominion are both owned by private equity, which means we don’t know who funds and controls them. And what little we do know is concerning.

ES&S, which by itself accounts for 44 percent of US election equipment, received its initial financing from the families of Nelson Bunker Hunt and Howard Ahmanson, Jr., right-wing billionaires who also…