By Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity –
A Williamson County election integrity citizens group has come forward with confirmations of serious issues from the October 26, 2021 and November 3, 2020 elections in Williamson County that are being ignored by the Williamson County Election Commission and state election officials despite multiple efforts by the group to talk with them about the concerns.
This occurs as the Williamson County Election Commission (WCEC) recently approved removing Dominion voting systems equipment from all Williamson County election locations and amid citizens’ worries the remaining issues will now be swept aside.
Early voting in the May 2022 election in Williamson County starts April 13, 2022.
“Removing Dominion was a good first step, however, there are a number of additional issues we have found in both of these recent elections that we’ve been trying for over a year to get government and commission officials to address, but to no avail,” said Frank Limpus, founder of Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity.
“Despite attempts to work collaboratively and quietly with these officials on these concerns, Williamson County Election Commission and state election officials have refused to consider or do anything about them. Our fear is that with this move to ES&S voting machines from Dominion, these other equally serious concerns, which can dramatically affect the outcome of our elections, will be swept under the rug. This is not the way to address legitimate problems brought to you by citizens concerned with election integrity.”
Some of the issues the group cites include:
• Nineteen of twenty voting machines used in the October 2021 election were running an unknown software following September 28, 2021 pre-election machine inspections by candidates who were shown a different software version than what was used in the election;
• Multiple refusals by WCEC and the state to address a chain-of-custody concern for a voting machine scanner bin full of ballots which didn’t exhibit the required security seal at the October 27th audit;
• Factually incorrect poll officer reports from most voting centers in the 2021 Franklin Alderman election containing multiple, blatant, serious math errors and information discrepancies, yet were signed off on by election officials as accurate and official. (These paper reports back up the electronic election records and are official election reports that would be used to affirm the election if the electronics were hacked or went bad.);
• Numerous refusals by Williamson County and the Secretary of State’s/Election Administrator’s office to release all documents related to the October 26, 2021 election following three open records requests of both entities;
• Plentiful technological and process issues found following research into the November 3, 2020 election in Williamson County whose officials did not respond when shown the problems;
• Concerns that the ES&S voting system that will replace the Dominion Results Tally and Reporting (RTR) system in the Election Management System (downstream from the precinct) will have the same confirmed vulnerability as Dominion did which allowed mass changing of votes without dual party authentication or oversight. To date, this RTR issue has not been addressed by county and state election and legislative officials, even though it was presented to them months ago. The ES&S machines could feature the same vulnerabilities.
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Details, photos and screenshots about these specific issues from election artifacts obtained in open records requests can be viewed here in a document titled “Despite Changing Election Equipment Vendors, A Large Number Of Election Problems Remain in Williamson County Elections.” The examples are too numerous to place in this release.
Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity (TVEI) was launched in late 2020 to explore if there were election irregularities in the county since citizens voted on Dominion voting machines. Since then, its members have researched a wide variety of documents, information, court cases, reports, activities in other states, interviewed poll workers and watchers, and presented its findings and recommendations to local and state government officials, legislators, election commissions and citizens throughout the state.
What began as looking into Williamson County issues, quickly spread to issues that are believed to be found statewide.
“I appreciate that Tennessee does have a good reputation for integrity, but officials and legislators are ignoring legitimate research and evidence of problems that remain which, if they’re not addressed, can be exploited by nefarious actors to change our elections,” Limpus said. “And this is not coming from a sore loser whose candidates lost in these elections. This is a non-partisan concern coming from citizens that care deeply about election integrity but have unearthed underlying issues that can affect an election, despite what equipment citizens are voting on.
“We’re hopeful the Williamson County Election Commission will address these concerns before this coming election.”
Information concerning TVEI’s recommended voting system that reduces the technology involvement in voting can be found here. Backup documentation to all of these recommendations can be found here.
KEY TIMELINE IN ATTEMPTING TO WORK WITH BOTH WILLIAMSON COUNTY ELECTION COMMISSION AND SECRETARY OF STATE’S OFFICE ON THESE ISSUES AND BEING SNUBBED:
In March 2021, Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity documented an initial 51 election integrity issues from the 2020 election and presented them to WCEC Chairman Bob Brown and Election Administrator Chad Gray on March 10, 2021.
Brown claimed to start answering the questions, but later declined to do so, saying he’d rather await a recertification process the WCEC asked the Tennessee State Election Commission to perform on Dominion machines. A large portion of our questions were not about the machines but concerned election processes and other technology issues noted in the Williamson County election. We still await answers.
In their April 2021 meeting, the state Commission agreed to look into recertifying the Dominion machines as well as the other four brands of voting machines used in Tennessee. But, to date they have yet to put the machines through a recertification process, despite questions by TVEI on February 4, 2022 about this to Election Coordinator Mark Goins, Secretary of State Tre Hargett and members of the Tennessee State Election Commission. We have received no answers to our questions.
Our major concern with the ES&S machines – and all voting machines, for that matter — comes as the Washington, D.C.-based Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which certifies all U.S. election voting equipment, in 2021 granted voting machine vendors the ability to include wireless networking devices in voting machines. A former board member of the EAC, Dr. Phillip Stark, resigned from the Board because of this move, which was made without Board approval or citizen input and is now suing the EAC. Tennessee Elections Coordinator Mark Goins sits on the EAC’s Standards Board.
Additional concerns with the recertification process came as we learned that Jessica Bowers, a ten-year employee of Dominion who in 2018 sold the Tennessee State Election Commission on allowing Dominion to enter Tennessee (and in 2019 sold Williamson County and Hamilton County on using Dominion machines) is now head of certification at the EAC. We anticipated that the EAC would be involved in the recertification process and suspected she could not be impartial on recertifying machinery she sold to the state in the first place.
Other attempts to discuss these and other issues with state and local election official include:
Chain-of-custody for scanner tub without security seal tag at October 27, 2021 audit –
- Oct. 31, 2021 public records request to Williamson County.
- Dec. 6, 2021 second public records request to Williamson County.
- Dec. 6, 2021 first public records request to Secretary of State as election pulled to Nashville by Goins and WCEC Chairman Bob Brown.
- Jan. 18. 2022 response back to WCEC lawyer answering questions/explaining 12/6 request.
- Feb. 4, 2022 Secretary of State office denies request for specific documents.
- Feb. 4, 2022 we reach out to Bob Brown/Chad Gray to discuss these issues. No answer.
- Feb. 6, 2022 more specific explanation of our request of this chain of custody given to the SoS counsel who is now our contact there.
- Feb. 11, 2022 SoS counsel says he won’t be answering any further questions/documents.
- Feb. 22, 2022 we reach out again to Brown/Gray and their lawyer to discuss these issues. No answer.
Factually incorrect poll officer reports
• Since the WCEC lawyer has forbidden us to talk with — and we assumed placed a gag order on — Brown/Gray to talk with us and the Secretary of State’s office refuses to discuss these issues, we share with Senator Jack Johnson (Feb 9 & 14) and Representative Brandon Ogles (Jan 28 & Feb 3) our whitepaper and executive summary concerning what we’ve found regarding the October 26th election and the remaining unanswered issues. Granted, the General Assembly has resumed and Johnson was instrumental in getting Dominion removed from the county, but neither have responded regarding these critical issues beyond Dominion and the fact that local and state officials are refusing to speak with us. If you can’t take questions and issues about the election process in your county and state to the highest officials in both, who can you turn to?
Results Tally & Reporting system concerns
- Aug. 10, 2021 letter to Bob Brown about questions for Dominion including the RTR issue since Dominion won’t talk with us. Issue discovered by reviewing the Dominion machine manuals by corporate security expert. No answer comes when we ask for simple clarification of what we believe to be possible with this finding.
- Aug. 10, 2021 letter to Mark Goins requesting he get questions to vendors – especially this RTR issue to Dominion — after no vendor agrees to talk with us. No answer from Goins.
- Sep. 28, 2021 RTR issue confirmed definitive by machine inspection for candidates and confirmation from WCEC employee. No follow up action on this by WCEC despite knowledge that it is an issue.
- Oct. 11, 2021 Presentation to TN State Election Commission and Mark Goins where the issue is specifically discussed. No action taken by Goins or Commission.
- Dec. 6, 2021 open records request to Williamson County Election Commission. No response given on this question.
- Dec. 6, 2021 open records request to Secretary of State.
- Jan 15, 2022 follow up with Secretary of State since no answer given and WCEC had refused to answer our questions.
- Jan. 18. 2022 response back to WCEC lawyer answering his questions and further explaining our 12/6 request. No response to our request.
- Feb. 4, 2022 we reach out to Bob Brown/Chad Gray to discuss these issues personally. No answer.
- Feb. 6, 2022 more specific explanation of request of this RTR issue is given to the SoS counsel since clarification was needed since he didn’t seem to understand the request and WCEC would not answer us.
- Feb. 11, 2022 SoS counsel says he won’t be answering any further questions/documents.
- Feb. 22, 2022 we reach out again to Brown/Gray and their lawyer one final time with the hope to discuss these issues. No answer has come.
About Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity
The Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity seeks to ensure election integrity for all Williamson County (its home county) and Tennessee voters by researching, documenting and alerting legislators, as well as community and state leaders and election officials to the weaknesses in our current election systems that might result in future election fraud from bad actors. This would additionally exacerbate the public’s lack of confidence and trust given credible, widespread allegations of voter fraud nationwide in the 2020 election and the fact that Williamson Countians voted on the same election equipment against which claims, reports and affidavits of fraud in other states have been leveled. www.tennesseeelectionintegrity.com
One Response
If Tn. lawmakers want truly free and honest elections, a law should be passed that states in no uncertain terms that any official or Government agency that refuses to comply with a FOI request be taken to jail. Do not pass go, Do not collect 200.00, no exceptions. If the captain of the sinking ship, i.e. any agency receiving and refusing a request shall be jailed until such time as the FOI request is taken care of. Any judge or attorney who interferes with the jailing shall be placed in the same cell. That’s true transparency, folks