When We Audit, We Might Survive

I wrote about Spoonamore earlier in the week and now feel a need to update. Much is happening on the hacked election front while also, from a big picture perspective, nothing is happening at all.

Stephen Spoonamore posted an update on Wednesday that sounded desperate. It contained typos and hyperbolic flourishes, giving excuse to those who want to skip past all of this potential rabbit hole conspiracy theory and wait for the real professionals to weigh in. Spoon’s update, though, also shared new data that should make this matter even more concerning. He may not be the professional with a federal department or intelligence agency behind him to give these concerns the polish and official authority we seek, but he’s a serious person, as I’ve said, and he’s an expert on spotting what may turn out to be, in his words, “the greatest crime in all our lifetimes.”

He also stood up to a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) this week. There were sharp data people in that chat, asking tough questions about his numbers. Some lost confidence in his case because he had over generalized with his bullet ballot claims. (Bullet ballots are ballots voters submit with selections in only one race, such as a vote for President and no votes for anyone down ballot.) He was forced to admit he didn’t know bullet ballots were the reason democrats could win senate races or governor races in nearly every swing state while losing the Presidency in each of them, with just barely enough votes to avoid automatic recounts, thanks to vote totals at the top of the ticket that exceeded vote totals everywhere down ballot. Bullet ballots are the most likely cause of much of this disparity, but he doesn’t know. We can’t know until a hand recount examines the paper ballots. Beyond this conflation of potential causes, which he apologized for, he remained convincing on the foundational concern that our data alarms must be going off right now.

I remain proud of Spoon, appreciating his courage speaking out and rallying election system security experts to the lonely cause of seeking recounts. The blowback is tremendous and comes from all sides. The right both fears and mocks (“who’s saying ‘stop the steal’ now”), while the left scoffs pretentiously that election denial should only be the other side’s game. Meanwhile the mainstream press rides above the fray, acting as though there’s no story worth covering here. This must be a tough time for Spoon. He had a comfortable life as a former CxO of many successful tech ventures. He could’ve just kept his head down and ignored his “Duty to Warn.” 

Where is our Woodward and Bernstein? Does 60+ bomb threats seem any less odd than right wing cuban exiles and ex-spooks breaking into Democratic headquarters?

And where is Director of CISA, Jen Easterly? Is she in Cancun with Merrick Garland sipping a margarita on the balcony of Ted Cruz’s suite at the Ritz?

Anyone doubting Spoonamore over typos in his letters or conflation of terms in his statistical analysis is missing the point on this moment. This moment is not where Hercule Poirot gathers the suspects in the dining room and reveals the final clues to the mystery. Instead, it is much more of a beginning.

Another article was posted this week by Rachel Donald, on the substack Planet: Critical, that contained a quote I feel illustrates well the moment we’re in. Rachel quoted a data scientist as saying, “It’s north of a 35 billion to 1 probability that you could win seven out of seven [swing states] outside of recount range with less than 50% of the vote.” I reached out to Rachel in the substack comments asking if she has a source for that quote. There’s been no reply and I hope she doesn’t feel I’m being snarky. I’m sincere. My gut tells me the improbability is this extreme, numerically, and I’m genuinely curious what statistical models have been developed to confirm the situation. Because it’s the extraordinary implausibility that betrays the true nature of this moment. Rather than a time for a master sleuth to gather us to hear resolution, this is instead more like a time for your credit card company to question whether it’s really you trying to buy a big screen television in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That’s our moment. We’re receiving a fraud alert. 

There are many other happenings swirling about our current state of paralysis, as we ignore this alarm. Spoonamore notes some key ones in his update. 

I continue to find the bomb threats the most perplexing. Certainly, nobody imagines these came from nowhere or were done for no reason. They were concentrated on key precincts in swing states near the end of election day. Potentially they were just dirty tricks intended to discourage people in line and thereby suppress a fraction of the vote, but Spoonamore has suggested they may have been designed to taint any recount with questions of chain of custody. Legal teams might argue ballots were left unsecured when the facilities were cleared. Regardless, there's little evidence of investigation. Not only are we failing to audit the vote in these precincts, we seem to lack any curiosity. Most of the bomb threats originated from Russian Internet domains, but if you mention that, you will be blasted by scornful trolls noting one of the threat actors was a precinct worker in Georgia. Somehow, this entire well-coordinated event hangs around as a mystery attracting little notice.

Speaking of Russia, there are now multiple Russian hackers vying for credit. One entity posing as such, Red Bear, sparked attention by including a hardcoded administrator password for Dominion machines, then showing step by step illustration of how the tabulations for these machines were altered using SQL. This may just be master trolling, mocking America's claims of election security, creating distracting red herrings for anyone sorting through the confusion (red herring, red bear - get it?), but we should note Red Bear's claim solves the statistical anomaly in the vote counts. It happens to be a perfect explanation for the strangeness of the numbers we see. 

Also, the hardcoded password claim has brought attention to a vulnerability in the Dominion systems that was shockingly well known. "Stop the steal" players from the 2020 controversy have been posting pictures of themselves wearing tee-shirts with this password (dvscorp08!). Do you want a tee-shirt that suggests anyone can alter the Presidential election at their leisure? They're for sale on Amazon.

Before you wonder if this password is just a rumor, just a lark, here’s a post from Chris Klaus, founder of Internet Security Systems, confirming the hardcoded backdoor is still in place across our swing states:

These are just a few notable examples of noise. There are many other claims, suspicions, potential red, bearish herrings.

None of this should distract us from that fraud warning though. Again, that warning is what defines this moment. We're the credit card company wondering how our customer who purchased a latte at a Starbucks near Union Square in San Francisco might be attempting to purchase a big screen television at a Walmart in Tulsa. The responsible thing for us to do is freeze the card and check-in with the customer.

Kamala Harris is the only authority who can demand investigations of these election transactions. She's the credit card company decision maker in this analogy. Does anybody have her number? We need her to do the responsible thing.

She famously chanted, "when we fight, we win." We're now down to, "when we audit, we might survive."

The truth of what happened in this election will come out someday. We eventually learned there was solid evidence of the Ohio tabulation manipulation in 2004. We learned the October surprise claim of a secret deal, made between Reagan's team and Iran to keep the hostages in captivity until after the election, was in fact what really happened in 1980. We learned Nixon sabotaged peace talks with Vietnam in 1968 to help his electoral chances. History has a way of uncovering these secrets. The truth is determined. The variable is time. If there are no hand recounts of this election's vote, we might learn the truth when the history books are teaching students in Tulsa, West Russia about how the great leader Putin defeated the great Satan of democracy with the help of his ace hacker Red Bear. 

Please, Madame Vice President. There may only be minutes left on the clock.