The 2020 election - was a flawed computer system used in 28 states?

 

More and more issues are being discovered with the Dominion voting system used by 28 states in the recent elections.  There's a huge amount of rumor and innuendo being circulated online, and I don't want to get into that can of worms.  Most of the allegations being made are not (yet) substantiated by verifiable facts, and unless and until they are, we shouldn't jump to conclusions.  Nevertheless, there are enough incidents being reported that I think it's safe to conclude that something went wrong involving the software.

• Either the system wrongly tabulated and reported vote counts;  or -
• The system was deliberately manipulated by its operators to switch votes from one candidate to another.

A tip o' the hat to The Gateway Pundit for staying on this story, and reporting many of the incidents that have given rise to doubt.  Last night it reported:

There is now a pattern of events we have uncovered across the country where votes are being taken from Republicans at all levels and transferred to competing Democrats in offsetting amounts.  These are not random because in every case votes are moved from Republicans to Democrats.

. . .

We reported first on a system glitch, as it was labeled, in Michigan which switched 6,000 votes back to President Trump.

Then another example was uncovered in Oakland County Michigan where again a Republican won his race as a result this glitch.

Then in Pennsylvania a ‘glitch’ was uncovered where nearly 20,000 votes were moved from President Trump to Biden.

When this is confirmed it will result Biden’s lead being cut by 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania bringing this race back to even.

Then we found approximately 6,000 votes which were taken from Trump and moved to Biden in Georgia due to a ‘glitch’.

Now tonight we have identified approximately 10,000 votes that were moved from President Trump to Biden in just one Wisconsin County.

This information came from an individual who saw this happen in Rock County Wisconsin.

. . .

Currently the race in Wisconsin is showing Biden with a lead of 1,630,570 votes to President Trump’s 1,610,030 votes.  When this adjustment is confirmed Biden will only hold a 1,508 vote lead.  This of course is before any of the hundreds of thousands of questionable votes showing up for Biden in Milwaukee early in the morning after the election are validated.

. . .

This is now a countrywide issue.

There's more at the link.

Speaking as a former computer programmer, analyst, systems engineer and project manager, I can assure you with absolute certainty that computer systems do not "accidentally" suffer "glitches" of this nature in multiple counties and states, and with the mistakes always - I repeat, ALWAYS - trending in the same direction:  i.e. to President Trump's detriment and Joe Biden's advantage.  That simply, flatly, cannot happen if a computer system is properly designed, tested and audited before implementation.  Of course, if it's not properly designed, tested and audited . . . that's another story.

I recall writing the pricing program for a major oil company in southern Africa.  It had to accept input from scores of different sources, all of which had to be taken into account in calculating a price for every single product (and size of product) in the company's extensive catalog - thousands of combinations.  It had to factor in cost of production, cost of storage, cost of transport, cost of sales, taxation and other official charges, movement across borders and through a frequently inefficient transport system to where it was needed, and so on.  It spanned thousands of lines of code, and took months to write, test and debug.  As the lead programmer, I had to get our code approved by three different, successively more senior layers of supervision, and then a fourth time by the top management of the oil company as a whole, before it was accepted for use in the field.  Every 'i' had to be dotted, every 't' had to be crossed, and the software had to be able to handle every possible, conceivable, imaginable combination of mistakes (including finger trouble by operators - the dreaded PEBKAC or PICNIC error.)  The day-to-day operation of the company, and its profitability, depended on that software;  so it was scrutinized, checked and double-checked as befitting that level of importance.  I doubt very much that Dominion's election software had to endure less scrutiny than that.

If an error shows up repeatedly in the field, I don't believe it's because the software wasn't sufficiently error-proofed.  I think it had to have been deliberate.  That may not be a flaw in the software itself - it may be caused by the users - but if the software allows such user errors to occur without raising a warning flag, that's unlikely to be anything but a deliberate choice on the part of those who designed the system.  What's more, last-minute computer system updates to provide an unknown "fix" are deeply suspicious.  They should never have been allowed - not in a system that's supposed to be checked and verified as stable and secure before an election.  How can anyone be sure they didn't introduce new errors, or possible ways to manipulate the vote, when no details were provided and there was no time to test the "update"?  Sorry - that stinks to high heaven.  It's the worst possible way to update such a critical system.

The Silicon Graybeard (an engineer with vast experience in the field) points out:

That was not a computer glitch. That was a programming decision. Whether that was some sort of programming error, which seems highly unlikely, or if it was deliberate cheating I don't know, but I highly suspect deliberately bad software.  Let's face it; adding integers is just about the easiest thing to get a computer to do (and if you're thinking of adding votes as floating point numbers, go back to school).

Let's get one thing clear.  Computer "glitches" cause a system to fail, or cause it produce random-looking outputs.  They can even possibly reboot the system.  If it's good software, it gives some sort of indication that something bad happened.  If it changes the results of a count, or moves it to another candidate that's something else. 

. . .

What I'm saying is if the computer "glitched," it would have done something far more random looking and easier to detect than moving votes from Trump to Biden.  That's no glitch.  It's a software feature.

Again, more at the link.

At this point (as noted, with every single reported "error" trending in Biden's favor and to Trump's disadvantage), I agree with the Silicon Graybeard.  These aren't glitches or problems or errors.  These are deliberate choices by those running the system.

This needs to be investigated as a crime - and because it's interstate in scope, probably under Federal law.

Peter