BC POLITICS
Saved by @SteveeRogerr

😳ES&S’s ExpressVote voting system reportedly has an integrated zebra technologies barcode reader whose “operation can be modified by scanning configuration barcodes,” which can “reconfigure which types of barcodes the scanner reads,” & “how it reads...&..processes them.” 1/

 2/ “They could cause the barcode scanner to stop tabulating ExpressVote barcodes or to tabulate them incorrectly. They can even be used to allow sending unintended data & keyboard commands to the voting system.”
3/ “A set of carefully constructed keyboard commands could be used to manipulate the voting system software.”
4/ This is a serious problem because, with the ExpressVote, the only part of the paper record counted as your vote is the barcode....
5/ Although there is human readable text beneath the barcode, a recent study showed that voters miss 93% of inaccuracies in that text. This is an invitation to fraud, especially for down ballot races, such as for state legislature.
6/ Discussion of the study referenced in post 5. @jhalderm led the study. https://t.co/R3aVXpCOGZ
7/ As I explain here, the US rarely conducts robust manual audits anyway. This must change. https://t.co/mbxFpCpFoQ
8/ “America’s preeminent election-auditing expert, Philip Stark...told me...that ‘only a few jurisdictions currently audit elections in a way that has a good chance of catching & correcting wrong reported outcomes...[E]ven those states only audit a few contests in each election.”
9/ Link to screenshot in post 1. It was election security expert @kskoglund who identified the concern about the zebra barcode reader. The ExpressVote XL apparently doesn’t have it, but ESS acknowledged that the ExpressVote does. https://t.co/p0fozWDzww
10/ I wrote about ES&S as a company here. https://t.co/JnJ8bwF3vH
11/ Verified Voting’s verifier tool shows which jurisdictions used ES&S ExpressVote voting systems in 2020. The ones in yellow used it for all or most in person voting. The ones in green used it primarily for ADA use. https://t.co/CxiHJD5hew
12/ I don’t know if all versions of the ExpressVote use the Zebra barcode reader.
13/ It appears that much of Texas and all of Arkansas and SC used the ExpressVote as a primary voting system. The largest county in Kansas, Johnson County, did too.
14/ Much of West Virginia and Ohio too.
15/ More from post 1 report: “These configuration barcode are not secret...They cld cause the barcode scanner to stop tabulating ExpressVote barcodes or to tabulate them incorrectly. They can even be used to allow sending unintended data & keyboard commands to the voting system.”
16/ “A set of carefully constructed keyboard commands could be used to manipulate the voting system software.”
The kicker: “A ballot card pre-printed with configuration barcodes could be submitted by any voter while inside the privacy of the voting booth.” 😳

We really just need #HandMarkedPaperBallots (exception for voters w/ disabilities). #BanTheExpressVote #BanBarcodeVoting 17/
PS. This does NOT prove fraud. It does indicate a potentially serious vulnerability. 18/
19/ #BanBarcodeVoting
20/ #HandMarkedPaperBallots #PenAndPaper #ProtectOurVotes

More from Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢

Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
Good news! The New York State Board of Elections voted yesterday to REJECT certification of ES&S’s ExpressVote XL all-in-one barcode ballot marking device (BMD), a glitchy & hackable touchscreen that ES&S has hoped officials would stupidly buy in lieu of pen and paper. 1/


I’m still trying to find out @NYSBOE’s reasoning, but I know one problem was that the ExpressVote XL runs on Windows 7 and can only mark ballots in English. If the XL were a person, it would be a MAGA. 2/

The XL has other problems. It runs the barcode “paper ballot” back under the printout AFTER the voter reviews it, which experts say means it could be maliciously programmed to eff with the barcode that is the only part of the “paper ballot” counted as your vote. 3/

Unfortunately, Philadelphia did choose the ES&S ExpressVote XL all-in-one ballot marking device (BMD), ignoring expert advice. I wrote about that unfortunate decision here in 2019. 4/

Here, for @NYRBooks, I also discuss problems involving the ES&S ExpressVote XL in PA in 2019. ES&S lobbyists had secretly donated to the two decision makers who then chose this system in Philly in lieu of #HandMarkedPaperBallots (pen & paper). 5/
SOCIETY
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
I lost faith in the US govt to tell me the truth re: election security when Comey & @EACgov testified that it wld be really hard to hack an election bc voting machines supposedly don't connect to the internet, & an expert explained on C-Span this was BS.1/

2/ Here is one of Halderman's C-span videos.

3/ It was like a death. Never in my life would I have thought my government would lie about something like this. Or, alternatively, be this incompetent. I spent the next three years feeling like I need to try to micromanage the situation bc I didn't trust them anymore.

4/ I know some people think it's bad for me to say this because it undermines voter confidence in elections. But guess what? I started out as an ordinary voter. This is what I found out. And I was horrified. There has been no reckoning for the lies.

5/ Reality Winner, who tried to bring a dose of reality to the situation, remains in prison. I do not trust our government re: election security. I just don't. They have never told us the full truth about 2016. They don't even try to be transparent.
ALL , ELECTIONINTEGRITY , ELECTIONS
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Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
.@CharlieKirk11’s “Turning Point Action was listed as a participant in [the] ... rally, which preceded the attack on Capitol Hill. Prior to the rally, in a tweet he later deleted, Kirk said the group wld be involved w/ sending over 80 buses...” 1/

2/ “CNBC captured a screenshot of tweet before it was deleted.
Kirk recently said on his podcast that those from Turning Point got back on their buses & left following the conclusion of the rally.”

3/ Thread


4/ 😳


5/
POLITICS
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
Agree. Also Bannon suggesting that Fauci shld be beheaded & Lyn Wood calling for Pence’s execution. These are Trump’s close advisors. Did Trump ever publicly disavow?
TRUMP
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
ES&S downplays problems w/ its voting machines. To know what occurred, we need public records requests. @RGarella did one in 2019 & found that, “‘poll workers & technicians reported issues with the new machines at more than 40 % of polling locations,’...1/

...[in Philadelphia], yet the voting machine vendor ES&S said that ‘it was ‘simply inaccurate’ for anyone to imply there were widespread issues.’” 2/

Although the GOP wants everyone focused on Dominion, it is ES&S that for years has arguably caused the most concern among election-integrity advocates and experts. I wrote about these concerns in detail here. 3/

Stacey Abrams’s group, Fair Fight Action, created this document detailing concerns with voting machine vendor ES&S, which had the Georgia contract before Georgia switched to Dominion. 4/

Look what happened on ES&S’s watch in Georgia in 2018. The situation w/ ES&S & these vanishing black votes was under congressional investigation when a court ordered Georgia to replace its old touchscreens in time for the 2020 election. 5/
POLITICS

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\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8I Support Our Military & Law Enforcement\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
🇺🇸I Support Our Milita...
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1. Juan O’Savin for verifying this. “Plane crashes are targeted kills.”

Here is a brief summary for those who may not be familiar with Kennedy History:
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Day1JTrumpet
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... continue part two
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Christina Warren
Christina Warren
@film_girl
A brief thread on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the crazy con man who is now claiming to have hacked into the Georgia voting machines in Fulton County. 90s kids and tech aficionados might remember Jovan as the inventor of the CueCat, the dumbest gadget of all time.

Also, for anyone who wants to claim that Jovan Hutton Pulitzer (not his given name, but one he changed legally after the CueCat debacle) invented QR Codes: he did not. Like that other right-wing crazy man who claimed to have invented email, Jovan didn’t invent QR Codes.

He did invent the CueCat, a product that somehow raised $185 million dollars for a tethered barcode scanner for magazines and newspapers, so you could get ads from your ads. As I said, the dumbest product of all time. Good backup barcode scanners after they were hacked, however

Oh, that’s another thing. When CueCat was a thing, its systems were hacked. I guess that’s what makes Jovan a security expert. His bankrupt company from 20 years ago was hacked and widely mocked. He’s a genius.

In recent years, Jovan pivoted to being a treasure hunter who was featured on and widely mocked on Curse of Oak Island, because the man is insane.
POLITICS
Demola Olarewaju
Demola Olarewaju
@DemolaRewaju
The death of Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande brings to my mind the triumph of excellence in political leadership as well as rebellion against the political order.

A lot has been said about LKJ since he died yesterday and I hope only to contribute my perspective to enrich all said.

My emphasis with history has always been to draw out lessons relevant to the present, to show how trends repeat themselves and to show certain hypocritical contradictions within the present system.

Only few others qualify as well as LKJ to do all the three - I hope I do justice.

One area pundits have largely missed out in the Jakande story is the very beginning - both of his life and of his politics.

LKJ's parents were from Omu-Aran in present day Kwara State but he contributed more to Lagos than so many others - we will return to this subsequently.

LKJ was not originally a political ally of Awolowo - a number of elders were with Awo right from the very beginning but LKJ contributed politically to Awolowo at a crucial time of religious threat to the dominance of the Action Group (Awo's party) in the pre-Independence mid 50s.

A group had been formed in 1957 and named the National Muslim League headed by Alhaji R.A. Smith who had been very critical of Awolowo's AG as a Christian party and moved to align with the Northern People's Congress of Sir Ahmadu Bello.

The political threat to Awo was very real.
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Ana Mardoll
Ana Mardoll
@AnaMardoll
Alright, I'm going to explain this one more time because I keep getting tweets like "people who vote for politicians who let them die of hypothermia deserve to die of hypothermia."

The people who voted red in Texas are, by and large, relatively fine right now. Yes, the storm has hurt them but the storm was going to hurt everyone.

But. They're either rich enough that *their* power wasn't cut off or rural enough that they have fireplaces and wood and wells.

Those millions without power are in places like Dallas county and Tarrant county and Harris county, I.e., the urban places that have the highest concentration of blue voters.

So it's not "(all/most) people voted for hypothermia and now they will fittingly die of hypothermia".

It's "(certain) people voted for the folks in cities to die of hypothermia, and they are, while the aforementioned voters are safe and dry and relatively comfortable."

Well, gosh, why don't those voters *do something* rather than passively being killed??

Do you know how many people live in Harris county? 4 million. Do you know how many ballot drop-off boxes they were allocated last election? 1.

1 box for 4 million people.
POLITICS

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Further Examination of the Motif near PRRA Reveals Close Structural Similarity to the SEB Superantigen as well as Sequence Similarities to Neurotoxins and a Viral SAg.

The insertion PRRA together with 7 sequentially preceding residues & succeeding R685 (conserved in β-CoVs) form a motif, Y674QTQTNSPRRAR685, homologous to those of neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) and Bungarus genera, as well as neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains

(20) (Fig. 2D). We further noticed that the same segment bears close similarity to the HIV-1 glycoprotein gp120 SAg motif F164 to V174.
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In (B), the segment S680PPRAR685 including the PRRA insert and highly conserved cleavage site *R685* is shown in van der Waals representation (black labels) and nearby CDR residues of the TCRVβ domain are labeled in blue/white
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https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Y674 - QTQTNSPRRA - R685
Similar to neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) & Bungarus genera & neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
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BANASHANKARI AMMA, NEAR BADAMI (KAR)
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Originally built by Chalukyas in 7th century. Devi Banashankari was their family deity. This image of Banashankari Amma was installed by Jagadekamalla I in 630 AD.

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