Paper ballots verified election results, says Dominion CEO in Senate oversight hearing
Updated Dec 15, 2020; Posted Dec 15, 2020
LANSING, MI - Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos defended the integrity of his company’s tabulating machines Tuesday during a state Senate Oversight Committee hearing.
The company has been the focus of a “disinformation campaign,” Poulos told committee members on Dec. 15, adding that he is not aware of any legal claim against his hardware or software that hasn’t been dismissed or deemed “inaccurate” in court.
Even in the slim chance Dominion’s machines were compromised, he said, a hand count of the physical paper ballots would have shown disparities before the vote was certified by the Board of State Canvassers.
“All the tabulator does is count the votes of the paper ballots that have been created and securely cast by the voters,” he said during his three-hour testimony. “The number reported by the machine can always be compared to a hand count of those original paper ballots. People can speculate about votes being switched or secret algorithms or glitches, but if any of that were true, the paper ballots wouldn’t match the machine count.”
Read more: Dominion Voting Systems agrees to testify before Michigan Senate Oversight Committee
The state canvassing board certified the vote last month, and President Donald Trump has not requested a hand recount. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson will conduct a post-election audit, while the Michigan Bureau of Elections and Antrim County officials will tally all ballots by hand there, as many allegations against Dominion center around initial disparities reported in the county on Nov. 3.
Dominion provides its technology to local election officials in 63 of Michigan’s 83 counties, including Antrim County. Initially, the county reported Biden won there by more than 3,000 votes . After officials discovered disparities in the digital versus physical count of ballots, they were corrected to show Trump winning by more than 3,700 votes .
Despite the positive result for the President, his supporters cling to the reversal as evidence of voter fraud enabled by the Dominion software. Poulos talked lawmakers through the chain of “human errors” that led to the initial miscount.
Officials in Antrim County failed to update all of the memory cards in their tabulators, as well as final testing before Nov. 3, he said.
“If all of the tabulators had been updated as per procedure, there wouldn’t have been any error in the unofficial reporting,” Poulos said. “If public logic and accuracy testing had taken place, the error would’ve been caught when it should have been caught, prior to the election.”
Poulos also addressed the recent release of a “forensic analysis” of his voting machines in Antrim County. Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer unsealed the report gathered by the Trump-supporting Allied Security Operations Group after a man in the county won a motion to investigate the machines in his challenge of a local marijuana ordinance.
Read more: Judge allows forensic investigation of voting equipment in Antrim County
The report alleged that the Dominion system could shift votes between candidates or proposals, but that claim won’t pan out when the machine vote totals are compared to paper ballots, Poulos said.
“The most important check on our machines is the paper ballot. Michigan has paper ballot records for every vote cast on a Dominion machine,” he said. “If there was any manipulation of the system, the paper ballots would not match the machine totals. Moreover, if unauthorized votes were somehow added to the count, those numbers would not match the canvassing.”
For the rest of the hearing, Republican lawmakers gave Poulos the opportunity to dismiss conspiracy theories about his company while under oath. These included alleged partnerships with Communist countries such as China or Cuba, or that his Denver-based company started in Venezuela.
“My company started in my basement, which happened to be in Toronto,” he quipped.
Poulos’ testimony was supported by Kent County Clerk Lisa Lyons, who criticized the “misinformation” that he had to refute in Tuesday’s hearing.
“Tabulators don’t run elections,” she said in a statement. “Clerks, staff and election workers from our communities who take an oath to uphold the Constitution run our elections, and in Michigan we run them using paper ballots that can be recounted and audited...The spread of misinformation must stop now.”
Immediately after Tuesday’s Senate Oversight hearing, committee members joined a Joint Oversight session with the state House to issue subpoenas for Livonia City Clerk Susan Nash and Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey. The subpoena power was granted by a partisan vote in the Michigan House minutes before the meeting.
Michigan’s Democratic electors cast their 16 Elelectoral votes for Biden on Monday in the State Capitol, making any reversal of the result virtually impossible.
source
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/12/paper-...aring.html
Updated Dec 15, 2020; Posted Dec 15, 2020
LANSING, MI - Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos defended the integrity of his company’s tabulating machines Tuesday during a state Senate Oversight Committee hearing.
The company has been the focus of a “disinformation campaign,” Poulos told committee members on Dec. 15, adding that he is not aware of any legal claim against his hardware or software that hasn’t been dismissed or deemed “inaccurate” in court.
Even in the slim chance Dominion’s machines were compromised, he said, a hand count of the physical paper ballots would have shown disparities before the vote was certified by the Board of State Canvassers.
“All the tabulator does is count the votes of the paper ballots that have been created and securely cast by the voters,” he said during his three-hour testimony. “The number reported by the machine can always be compared to a hand count of those original paper ballots. People can speculate about votes being switched or secret algorithms or glitches, but if any of that were true, the paper ballots wouldn’t match the machine count.”
Read more: Dominion Voting Systems agrees to testify before Michigan Senate Oversight Committee
The state canvassing board certified the vote last month, and President Donald Trump has not requested a hand recount. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson will conduct a post-election audit, while the Michigan Bureau of Elections and Antrim County officials will tally all ballots by hand there, as many allegations against Dominion center around initial disparities reported in the county on Nov. 3.
Dominion provides its technology to local election officials in 63 of Michigan’s 83 counties, including Antrim County. Initially, the county reported Biden won there by more than 3,000 votes . After officials discovered disparities in the digital versus physical count of ballots, they were corrected to show Trump winning by more than 3,700 votes .
Despite the positive result for the President, his supporters cling to the reversal as evidence of voter fraud enabled by the Dominion software. Poulos talked lawmakers through the chain of “human errors” that led to the initial miscount.
Officials in Antrim County failed to update all of the memory cards in their tabulators, as well as final testing before Nov. 3, he said.
“If all of the tabulators had been updated as per procedure, there wouldn’t have been any error in the unofficial reporting,” Poulos said. “If public logic and accuracy testing had taken place, the error would’ve been caught when it should have been caught, prior to the election.”
Poulos also addressed the recent release of a “forensic analysis” of his voting machines in Antrim County. Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer unsealed the report gathered by the Trump-supporting Allied Security Operations Group after a man in the county won a motion to investigate the machines in his challenge of a local marijuana ordinance.
Read more: Judge allows forensic investigation of voting equipment in Antrim County
The report alleged that the Dominion system could shift votes between candidates or proposals, but that claim won’t pan out when the machine vote totals are compared to paper ballots, Poulos said.
“The most important check on our machines is the paper ballot. Michigan has paper ballot records for every vote cast on a Dominion machine,” he said. “If there was any manipulation of the system, the paper ballots would not match the machine totals. Moreover, if unauthorized votes were somehow added to the count, those numbers would not match the canvassing.”
For the rest of the hearing, Republican lawmakers gave Poulos the opportunity to dismiss conspiracy theories about his company while under oath. These included alleged partnerships with Communist countries such as China or Cuba, or that his Denver-based company started in Venezuela.
“My company started in my basement, which happened to be in Toronto,” he quipped.
Poulos’ testimony was supported by Kent County Clerk Lisa Lyons, who criticized the “misinformation” that he had to refute in Tuesday’s hearing.
“Tabulators don’t run elections,” she said in a statement. “Clerks, staff and election workers from our communities who take an oath to uphold the Constitution run our elections, and in Michigan we run them using paper ballots that can be recounted and audited...The spread of misinformation must stop now.”
Immediately after Tuesday’s Senate Oversight hearing, committee members joined a Joint Oversight session with the state House to issue subpoenas for Livonia City Clerk Susan Nash and Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey. The subpoena power was granted by a partisan vote in the Michigan House minutes before the meeting.
Michigan’s Democratic electors cast their 16 Elelectoral votes for Biden on Monday in the State Capitol, making any reversal of the result virtually impossible.
source
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/12/paper-...aring.html
