Jess Bradfield’s parting words with his 90-day resignation notice to the Cache County Council were that he hoped the County Clerk seat would be occupied by a qualified person and not an “election denier” suggested that those two things were mutually exclusive. Perhaps not. There might be a very qualified person who throws their hat in the ring and who might hold valid concerns about the wide-spread use of electronic voting machines and the inherent risks associated with them. In 2020, when Jess Bradfield took the County Clerk position, I hoped that he would have been that person. Instead, he completely up-ended the County Clerk’s office from staff to functional tasking and without haste installed several ES&S DS450 electronic voting machines. What is widely known, but touted by some as folly, is that these machines can be digitally manipulated. They can transfer data wirelessly by ISPs and can alter voting data- all without a secure audit trail. This miracle technology has been in the making for over twenty years. After the 2000 presidential election (remember the hanging chads), Congress funded the electronic voting machine industry to the tune of over $3 billion during the next several years leading to touch-screen ballots, computerized tabulations and optical scanner voting systems which read paper ballots (the approach taken in Cache County with the E&S machines).
In 2019, the State of Texas made a decision not to use electronic voting machines due to their inherent risks and due to the fact that they would not be compliant with requirements of the Texas Elections Code. Here were some of their findings:
• Hardware within these machines can be connected to the internet
• Ballot scanners can jam and are slow at scanning hand-marked ballots
• Ballot marking devices have issues with straight party voting
• Handwritten write-ins which would be subject to adjudication are not easily picked up by ballot scanners.
These are some examples of questionable, menacing outcomes associated with the use of electronic voting machines. These machines create huge vulnerabilities from both intentional and inadvertent malfunctions. Americans have a right to free and fair elections; however that right is being compromised in the name of convenience through the use of these machines. In response to Jess Bradfield’s thoughts about the character and qualities of the next county clerk, I would like to see someone in that role who is qualified and has a healthy skepticism about electronic voting machines. A person who does their homework and also attempts to gage the pulse of the community in the use of these machines. A person who puts some distance between themselves and this wholesale “buy-in” of this supposed technology miracle.
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