Justsomeguy

I'm going to beat this like a drum for the rest of my days. We need a new paradigm on public service. As people retire, they should expect to do public service for 2 to 6 years or so. That could take many forms. Run for office. Work elections for a four year cycle. Attend commissioners' courts, city council meetings and the water board and report what you see to your friends and neighbors. Speak up at the meetings when something doesn't sound right.

I think there is a place for Grand parents at school board meetings, but that seems to be a job for the parents whose kids are in schools. The grand parents maybe should likely be keeping an eye on the state level education stuff.

Seniors have invaluable experience and knowledge. This is a way to use it while winding down in our later years. Much of this could be done in far less than 20 hours a week. Some positions could be a short second career.

A republic is a government by and for the people, and our involvement has been limited. hitting "like" on a post isn't enough.

Lance Wallnau on Twitter: "How do you plan to engage in the cultural battle in America? #Nations #InheritanceOfJesus #Prophecy #Politics https://t.co/GdVjrSA0GZ" / Twitter

As I wake up this Thanksgiving morning, I find that we are in a serious fight for our freedoms. Ironically a fight that many people have yet see coming. I'm thankful for the people that are in this fight with me. I've never seen a more dedicated group of people in my life.

Most all of you are here altruistically, and certainly have more enjoyable things you could do with your time, but you stepped up to protect kids, grandkids, friends and neighbors that may not even see the threat, or understand what you are doing. Today I give many thanks for your efforts and for allowing me to stand among you.

This morning I want to talk a bit about cognitive dissonance. A couple of days ago, I posted a link to this fairly old NBC article:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/online-vulnerable-experts-find-nearly-three-dozen-u-s-voting-n1112436

I first came across that almost exactly two years ago now. At the time I was involved in an online discussion with people I’ve associated with for many months and in some cases many years. One of the participants is a well qualified Cyber Security professional who was working for a major university, securing their systems at the time. I’ll call him Tom. The discussion of whether election devices were online or not came up and I offered the NBC article as evidence that they apparently were in several jurisdictions.

Tom immediately stated that the equipment was not online despite the fact that he’d just been offered a major media article that stated the inverse, He went on to say that the equipment was certified and that this type of equipment would be regularly patched. At the time, I was just beginning to learn that this information is either irrelevant or untrue. In the next few weeks I’ll lay out just why that is so, but for today I want to concentrate on the fact that the individual was given evidence from what most people would consider a reliable source, and in the face of that evidence, without having specific knowledge to the contrary, he disputed the information. Why? It contrasted with his belief system. He believed that his government and others in his industry were taking care of business.

In the previous article that linked to NBC, I referred to the National Election Defense Coalition, a leftist election integrity site. The NEDC website is a pretty good example of cognitive dissonance on it's own. They state repeatedly that there are vulnerabilities in the system, but as soon as people started saying that the vulnerabilities had been exploited in 2020, they started dancing on a tightrope to avoid damaging the preferred narrative.

I personally didn't look into the 2020 election until several days after the election. Slowly, I started looking, reading and examining some stats and I realized that yup, there had been cheating, but even then had no idea of the scale. In the months since, there have been several times that I have been forced to consider fraud and corruption that was of a mind boggling scale. This is not a simple ballot stuffing in the middle of the night operation. It is that, but's also a sophisticated cyber and influence operation on a scale that is unimaginable to most people. In making that statement, people will start to discount what I have to say because they don't want to believe that could be true. I understand. I have sat at this desk stunned, and simply not wanting to believe what the conclusions I was coming too. The scale of this is literally too big to comprehend. Our minds do not want to wrap around evil on this scale. It is easy to reject these ideas. That doesn’t mean that it’s proper to do so.

Strangely, the old fashioned ballot stuffing takes hundreds of people to accomplish - possibly thousands, but the cyber and influence part? They take far fewer people and likely have grater affect.

The conversation with Tom that I described above happened just a short while after the election, but before another significant event that Tom would become deeply involved in. The Solar Winds. hack. I don’t believe that most people understand the scope of the Solar Winds intrusion. This affected most government and large corporation cyber operations to their core. The people that did that, had pretty much unfettered access to EVERYTHING.

In the early days of that disaster, Tom stated that he couldn't say much about it, but it was bad. Real bad. I didn’t ask if it had changed his mind on election issues. He was already having to face ideas that bothered him. He was having to face some facts. That can be a hard thing to do.

Fight's on, lets roll.

Over the coming weeks there will be a stream of articles coming that will start to poke holes in some of the nonsense that is being fed to the public about our election system.

There are always new things popping up that need attention, but I'll roll stuff out on as regular a schedule as I can. This mornings article is an impromptu item that just presented itself to me today.

This NBC article from Jan of 2020 will be the basis of this mornings subject.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/online-vulnerable-experts-find-nearly-three-dozen-u-s-voting-n1112436

Shortly after I started working on election stuff, I found the NBC news article that I linked to above. Some time later, it dawned on me that I was not familiar with the expert in the video, despite being heavily involved in the subject for quite some time. When another person posted the article today, it was the push I needed to find out more about him. His name is Kevin Skoglund and he’s associated with the National Election Defense Coalition (NEDC).

https://www.electiondefense.org/

A quick read of their front page will quickly demonstrate that they are not a right wing organization. Quite the opposite. As I read through the pages, I thought that on one hand, I wish I’d found them sooner, and on the other, I’m glad I didn’t. In the last two years, my opinions have come to be fairly close to theirs, but I’m glad we came to those opinions independently. I could have written much of what is on their pages, and as their writing is better than mine, I will likely refer to them often in the future. Strangely after the 2020 election, they started walking a tightrope with their statements. While they still advocate that the election system needs significant improvement, they are careful to not step on any of the lefts narrative. That’s a hard line to walk. Looking at their list of supporters makes for an interesting read.

The main point I wish to convey today, is that election integrity is not a right wing thing. These very left leaning people and I have very similar ideas and least on the basic voting process and equipment. In addition to the NBC article, I have in the past posted links to dozens of articles by mainstream and or left wing publications warning of issues with the election system. All of which seem to be written BEFORE 2020. How coincidental. In addition to the NEDC, the Verified Voting site https://verifiedvoting.org/ is staffed with people that are not likely to be associated with the right, Clint Curtiss, a programmer that wrote code in Florida several years ago is a strong Biden supporter today and he readily admits that he likely wrote the first code to be used to change votes. Lastly we have Mr. Stephen Spoonamore, a highly regarded cyber security expert who has accused

Republican party members of cheating in elections although he is apparently a Republican himself. I have not read his published works deeply, but from what I’ve read, I likely agree with him on more issues than not. The Republicans are cheating too.

This is in no way a right wing issue, this is a cornerstone of the republic issue and it must be solved. The alternative is not one that I wish to contemplate.

The issues seem small, but there are far reaching consequences if all issues are considered.

Here’s the short version of a battle that is going on in the Texas right now and why the AG’s decision on my document request is so important.

I am asking for electronic ballot information that the legislature has clearly stated is public information. Specifically, I’m asking for ballot images which are simply pictures of the ballots, and cast vote records which are a synopsis of the information on the ballot and are what our election tabulations are based on. It is a tally sheet in essence.

There is a frequent claim made that 66.058 makes precinct election records confidential and non releasable for 22 Months. It clearly does not say that, (see side 2) it is simply a retention period and that interpretation saying it makes things confidential is in conflict with what the legislature has said in 1.012 and 125.064, which specifically make virtually all election records public

The only documents specified in the entire section of 66.058 are Voted Ballots, and they are given specific storage and access requirements for that period. No other document is offered that protection. I should note that even the ballots are accessible, but only as allowed by other sections of the code.

There is an attempt to conflate ballots with ballot images and other ballot information. This is in conflict with 128.001 which makes a clear exception to 66.058 for this type of electronic “ballot materials”, and 125.064 that clearly makes any documents or records generated by an electronic voting system to be public documents. Ballot images and other electronic files are indeed generated by the system.

Often, various county departments will call the SoS office and be given advice over the phone that contradicts current statutes that are quoted above.

Two opinions are often used in making these claims. One is from the SoS, Election Law Opinion No. JWF-9 (1983) is antiquated. JWF-9 References code that has long since disappeared from the books and deals with images that were made in completely different circumstances, apparently illegaly. The images today are made lawfully. Both 128.001 and 125.064 were written into the election code since that decision was issued. The law, facts and circumstances are all different now than in 1983.

ORD 505 is an AG decision that references ballots and not ballot images, and I contend that 128.001 specifically states that images are a separate thing from ballots that it is not applicable to this circumstance.

Sec. 66.058. PRESERVATION OF PRECINCT ELECTION RECORDS.

(a)  Except as otherwise provided by this code, the precinct election records shall be preserved by the authority to whom they are distributed for at least 22 months after election day.
(b)  For a period of at least 60 days after the date of the election, the voted ballots shall be preserved securely in a locked room in the locked ballot box in which they are delivered to the general custodian of election records.  On the 61st day after election day, the general custodian of election records may:
(1)  require a person who has possession of a key that operates the lock on a ballot box containing voted ballots to return the key to the custodian; and
(2)  unlock the ballot box and transfer the voted ballots to another secure container for the remainder of the preservation period.
(b-1) Except as permitted by this code, a ballot box or other secure container containing voted ballots may not be opened during the preservation period.
(c)  If during the preservation period an authorized entry is made into a ballot box or other secure container containing voted ballots, when the purpose for the entry is fulfilled, the box or container shall be relocked or resecured, and the box and key or secure container returned to the custodian.
(d)  A custodian of a ballot box or secure container containing voted ballots commits an offense if, during the preservation period prescribed by Subsection (a), the custodian:
(1)  makes an unauthorized entry into the box or container;  or
(2)  fails to prevent another person from handling the box or container in an unauthorized manner or from making an unauthorized entry into the box or container.
(e)  An offense under Subsection (d) is a Class A misdemeanor.
552.001

(f) The records in ballot box no. 4 may be preserved in that box or by any other method chosen by the custodian. If the records are removed from the box, they may not be commingled with any other election records kept by the custodian. 
(g)  Electronic records created under Chapter 129 shall be preserved in a secure container.

(h) For the preservation of precinct election records in an election involving a federal office, the secretary of state shall instruct the affected authorities on the actions necessary to comply with federal law and otherwise implement this section.
cts 1985, 69th Leg., ch. 211, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1986. Amended by Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1078, Sec. 18, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 2003, 78th Leg., ch. 1315, Sec. 40, eff. Jan. 1, 2004.

Amended by: 

Acts 2005, 79th Leg., Ch. 950 (H.B. 1580), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2005.

Sec. 128.001. COMPUTERIZED VOTING SYSTEM STANDARDS. (a) The secretary of state shall prescribe procedures to allow for the use of a computerized voting system. The procedures must provide for the use of a computerized voting system with:

(1)  multiple voting terminals for the input of vote selections on the ballot presented by a main computer;  and
(2)  a main computer to coordinate ballot presentation, vote selection, ballot image storage, and result tabulation.
(b)  Notwithstanding Chapter 66, a system under this section may allow for the storage of processed ballot materials in an electronic form on the main computer.
(c)  The secretary of state may modify existing procedures as necessary to allow the use of a system authorized by this chapter.

Added by Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1349, Sec. 50, eff. Sept. 1, 1997.