Guest post by Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity
On the heels of the approval from the Tennessee Secretary of State, the Williamson County (Tennessee) Election Commission kicked Dominion Voting Systems out of the county on February 16, 2022 (see attached letter from Secretary of State at the end of this post) and will now be moving to ES&S voting machines.
But a citizen election integrity group – Tennessee Voters for Election Integrity – affirms after a year of research and numerous presentations to various commissions, government officials, and legislators, a number of underlying election process issues, chain-of-custody issues, inspection issues, and election documentation issues still remain and election officials and legislators are cavalierly ignoring them, threatening the integrity and trustworthiness of future Williamson County elections.
With new machinery coming for a new election that starts with early voting in two months, the fear is the documented problems will be buried and ignored… hidden by ES&S’ equipment and a continual snub of the group’s research and continuous efforts to work with election officials to resolve the issues.
Williamson County (Tennessee) election integrity citizens group have come forward with confirmations of serious issues from the October 26, 2021, and November 3, 2020 elections in Williamson County. These 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 and away 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;
- Blatantly factually incorrect poll officer reports from most voting centers in the 2021 Franklin Alderman election containing multiple, 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 were 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.
Details, photos, and screenshots about these specific issues from election artifacts obtained in open records requests can be viewed here and at the end of this post. The examples are too large and 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.
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
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