Lawmakers hear from town clerks that they can’t catch election fraud

Lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee heard from multiple town clerks last week about election fraud attempts in Vermont. The clerks said it’s difficult to detect fraud, and they don’t get a lot of training for this part of the job.

The clerks meet with committee members via a Zoom meeting on Jan. 19 to discuss election security matters. The front-line election workers got to discuss a range of problems.

State Rep. Samantha Lefebvre, R-Orange, asked if they experienced multiple ballots coming in for one voter, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

“I was wondering if that occurred anywhere where someone showed up to vote on either the elections, and they already had another ballot there,” Lefebvre said.

Donna Kinville, city clerk for South Burlington, said she experienced such problems.

USPS

MORE VOTE BY MAIL?: Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Secretary of State Jim Condos continue to push more vote-by-mail in Vermont.

“We actually did have it happen,” she said.

Kinville explained that town clerks do not automatically check to match the names, and added that some attempts to vote twice were probably a mistake — but not all of them.

“We probably had five or six [instances], and one or two of them I think were done fraudulently. I think the others were just mistakes. Someone voted someone else’s ballot. But I think the others were an attempt.”

Kinville said some kinds of fraud can’t be detected, and that the state provides little guidance with voter fraud detection.

“We get a lot of election training, but we don’t get a lot of election fraud training and how to detect it,” she said.

The hearing comes after one of the most contested U.S. presidential elections in history. Some polls show three-quarters of all Republicans believe that the election was stolen. One of the causes of widespread distrust was widespread use of mail-in ballots, which are banned in many other nations but continue to be promoted by Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos.

At the Jan. 14 meeting of the Senate Government Operations Committee, Vermont Director of Elections Will Senning told lawmakers if a person fills out a ballot illegally for someone else, it would be counted in the election results.

Senning said when a fraudulent ballot is cast and counted, if the defrauded voter attempts to vote in person and is prevented from double voting, that situation can be investigated.

“You can’t get the vote back, but you can at least potentially go and prosecute the person for voting on someone else’s behalf,” he said.

John Odum, city clerk of Montpelier, discussed an instance of fraud that he caught.

“Yeah, we caught one person trying to vote twice,” he said.

Odum also struck down one new idea that Condos is interested in.

“I know Secretary Condos would like to do some kind of poll book option where we can all be essentially working directly into the master database so it would be possible for somebody to go and vote in two different locations or two different towns,” Odum said. “That brings a whole different, you know, bag of worms as far as security of the databases.”

Belvidere Town Clerk Cathy Mander-Adams told lawmakers her team hand-counts ballots so “99.9 percent” of them get a good look.

“I had a couple of attempts,” she said. “Somebody moved right at election time, but nothing that couldn’t be resolved quickly,” she said. “I don’t think we had any intentional tries. But, again, because we hand-count everything, most of 99.9 percent of what came in [was] to my face, in to me. I was able to decide, because I was keeping on top of things, if it was legitimate.”

According to the National Election Defense Coalition, hand-counted paper ballots are the only sure-standard to detect or bypass most types of election fraud.

“Durable, hand-marked paper ballots must be established as the national standard for democratic elections in the United States,” the coalition’s website states.

Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.

Image courtesy of USPS

16 thoughts on “Lawmakers hear from town clerks that they can’t catch election fraud

    • Richard,

      In Belarus, the opposition may have gotten more votes, but lost by a landslide, according to the VOTE COUNTERS

      Stalin:

      I do not care who votes.
      I care only about who COUNTS the votes

  1. Town Clerks in the ZOOM meeting, and others, likely would be interested in this demonstration of how easy it is to hack voting machines.

    Remember, election fraud has been going on for decades.
    Kennedy was elected by the “efforts” of Major Daley in Chicago, and “efforts” in other states, in 1960.
    His popular vote margin was 100,000.
    That was well before a huge influx of illegals were legalized over the decades.

    Poor Vermont is very fortunate. It has mostly older vote counting machines. Other states are more modern.

    They have “fancy” DOMINION AND DIEBOLD, etc., counting machines, with programmable cards that can be inserted into the machines, plus those machines can be connected to the internet, plus the insertable cards can be remotely altered.

    The rule is, if it can be done, it will be done, as necessary.

    Any election, anywhere, whether in the US or a banana republic, can have alterable, real-time outcomes, based on local and remote decisions. If the vote is trending adverse, just tweak it the other way by taking votes from one candidate and giving them to the favored one.

    THE “HURSTI HACK” OF A DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINE

    A Diebold voting machine was selected, at random, from many machines, by one election official. See video.
    An electronic card, which had been altered by a computer programmer, was inserted into the machine. See Note.

    Eight volunteer election officials filled in ballots 6 to 2 that the Diebold voting machine could not be hacked
    After running the ballots through the machine, the recorded vote was displayed as 7 to 1, i.e., the Diebold machines can be hacked
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75xvZ3osFg

    A few of the officials were shocked, others were just quiet, and one, a woman, started to cry.
    Obviously, she, as an experienced election official, had no idea such frauds could happen, and was deeply distraught to learn about it.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75xvZ3osFg

    The above video of the ‘Hursti Hack’ is an excerpt from a feature-length, Emmy-nominated documentary. Please watch the entire documentary.
    https://vimeo.com/ondemand/hackingdemocracy

    This hack proved any America election can be stolen, by using just a few lines of computer code.
    All this has been well-known by many US (and foreign) election officials for years, especially those in the six swing states, which miraculously were donated to Biden-in-the-basement, who did not even campaign.

    NOTE: When an electronic card is inserted into a computer slot, the computer code becomes visible on the screen. A computer programmer scans the code and alters a few lines that relate to the counting aspect, saves the changes, and the electronic is altered ready for nefarious use.

    NOTE: Pam Bondi demonstrates that the Hunter Biden and Joe Biden corruption concerns in Ukraine and elsewhere, are legitimate.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPvMuzyVOig

    NOTE: This article summarizes a biography of Biden. There is a lot of information on the internet, because he ran twice for US President.
    He could not get “traction”, largely due to the US Media relentlessly digging up dirt.
    The US Media favored Clinton in 2016, but Trump won.
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hiding-the-hunter-bide

  2.    Dr. Peter Navarro released the best summarysing reports on voter fraud so far.

              https://navarroreport.com

           
    His second, the best  report on Election irregularities  has
    the title
     
           the Art of the steal  

             

    Dec. 2020 Dr. Navarro released his first report:

        
           the immaculate Deception  

    It can be read also  direct online via
     
          
    https://archive.is/DWVPf

  3. Everyone should be concerned about fraudulent voting. Even if there is no “mass fraud”. All it takes is one fraudulent vote on the other side (regardless of which side you’re on), and your vote has been negated.
    If every citizen’s vote should count, then any fraud should be abhorred and stopped, no matter how big or small. And most any attempt to make voting “easier”, should be well thought out before being implemented.

  4. Inept comes to mind with that statement, voting should be a very simple process,
    go to the polls with an ID, or ” request ” an absentee ballot it’s worked for years.

    All these other voter-friendly formats, you know the ones, everything to make
    fraudulent votes happen, by design is my guess !!

    When was the last time the voter role was updated ?? people die every year and
    people move every year, I bet it’s been years……

    Wake up people, let’s make sure we have ” Voter Integrity ” and we need to hold the
    Secretary Of State feet to the fire to make it happen. It’s pretty pathetic when our own
    clerks can stop it or catch it.

  5. TNR: your headline is a little misleading. While the clerks said they couldn’t catch all fraudulent voting, as your article later points out, they did catch a couple of instances and didn’t believe fraud was rampant because they know most of the people voting. Using the master database (i.e. voter checklist) is the concensus solution, along with sufficient real time internet access and election volunteers at the polling places, coupled, of course, with a secure paper trail for verification.

    I watched the entire meeting and was impressed, not only with the effort the clerks put into this, but their intent to run a legitimate election.

    • Post Script: Regardless of the town clerk’s expressed intentions, I have to say that a forensic audit of Vermont’s voting counting devices be carried out. Resisting an audit at this point only adds fuel to fire of mistrust. Afterall, if the machines are legitimate, why would anyone resist having them checked out?

      • P.P.S. A larger concern is Vermont’s automatic registration process. The problem may not be with the machines, but that the people registering to vote (when they get a driver’s license, for example) while eligible to drive may not be eligible to vote. After all, if being ‘qualified’ to vote isn’t an issue, why have voter registration in the first place? Just let anyone who walks into a polling booth choose their candidates.

        Of course, with that alternative being clearly unconstitutional, we can see why those advocating such a process want to disregard the constitution, until, of course, it is their rights being infringed. What goes around comes around.

        • Jay,

          There are 3 methods of voting:

          1) Appear in person
          2) Send absentee mail-in ballots to Town Clerks
          3) Drop mail-in ballots in drop boxes located throughout various states. Typically, those boxes are unsupervised/unmonitored, which means the “chain of custody” is broken, i.e., in violation of election law.

          Town Clerks, etc., receive those ballots, and are required, by law, to verify, USING DOCUMENTS ON FILE FOR EACH REGISTERED VOTER:

          1) Voter full signatures; not just a scribble
          2) Up-to-date voter IDs; not something 20 years old.
          3) If voter met residency requirements; utility bills, local and state tax bills, driver’s license, social security record.
          4) If voter is dead or alive,
          5) If voter met age requirements,
          6) If voter were a citizen, i.e., born in the US (copy of notarized birth certificate) or naturalized (copy of citizen papers)

          After checking all those criteria, Town Clerks, etc., mark the voters as having voted, on registered voter lists.
          The total of such markings is called the turnout, which is reported by Town clerks to State election officials.

          NOTE: Town clerks have stated they cannot check these criteria, because their records lack sufficient documentation.

          NOTE: Mail-in voting takes fraud opportunities to a whole new level, as was proven during the past election.

  6. “Hand counting”?

    Gee,

    Is there a requirement regarding the composition of the ballot paper?
    In the US, it would be tree fibers, but in China it would be rice fibers.

    What about running ballots more than once through the counting machines, while no one is looking, i.e., before hours, or after hours?

    What about time-stamping ballots went they are run through the counting machine?

    What about dead people voting?
    What about felons voting, in or out of jail?
    What about out-of-staters voting, whether they own a house in Vermont or not?
    What about non-citizens voting?

    What about under-age people voting?
    What about out-of-state students voting in Vermont and in their own state?
    How would a mail-in ballot without fold-marks be counted? Would it be rejected?
    What about drive-by voting?

    What about Town Clerks insisting on copies of up-to-date photo IDs, full signature (not just a scribble), birth certificate, citizen papers, proof of residence, such as phone bill, utility bill, tax bills, car registration, tax returns, social security record, etc., before registering anyone?

    What about illegal aliens voting?

    How about forensic counting? Inexpensive machines are available
    How about counting machines that can be connected to the internet? They can be hacked by anyone in the world.
    How about counting machines that have slots for inserting programmable cards? Such cards can be altered with a few lines of code by any computer programmer.

    Stalin:
    I do not care who votes.
    I care only about who COUNTS the votes

      • WAYS TO HAVE FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS

        Is there a requirement regarding the composition of the ballot paper?
        In the US, it would be tree fibers, but in China it would be rice fibers.

        What about running ballots more than once through the counting machines, while no one is looking, i.e., before regular hours, during regular hours, and after regular ours?

        What about requiring time-stamping ballots when they are run through the counting machine?
        What about dead people voting?
        What about felons voting, in or out of jail, or on parole?
        What about out-of-staters voting, whether they own a house in Vermont or not?
        What about non-citizens voting?
        What about illegal aliens voting, documented or not?
        What about under-age people voting?
        What about out-of-state students voting in Vermont and in their own state?
        What about mail-in ballot without fold-marks. Would they be rejected or waived through?
        What about same-day registration and voting, often without proper documentation?
        What about people getting a driver’s license, and also getting automatically added to a registered voter list, even though they would not have proper documents on file with a Town Clerk?

        Town Clerks should be insisting on documents for verifying if:

        1) Voter has full signature; not just a scribble
        2) Voter has up-to-date voter IDs; not something 20 years old.
        3) Voter met residency requirements; utility bills, local and state tax bills, driver’s license, car registration, tax returns, social security record.
        4) Voter is dead or alive,
        5) Voter met age requirements,
        6) Voter is a citizen, i.e., born in the US (copy of birth certificate, preferably notarized) or naturalized (copy of citizen papers)

        WAYS TO PREVENT FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS

        How about forensic counting of ballots? Inexpensive machines are available
        How about counting machines that can be connected to the internet? They can be hacked by anyone in the world.
        How about counting machines that have slots for inserting programmable cards? Such cards can be altered with a few lines of code by any computer programmer.

        Stalin:

        I do not care who votes.
        I care only about who COUNTS the votes

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