A limited case study of election operations in Sacramento, California after the 2020 election provided ample evidence that a robust audit was needed in the county.
A group that labels itself Great American Rebirth released a report in early 2021 in which it shared the results of a walkthrough in Sacramento after the 2020 election.
Great American Rebirth shares a summary of what it identified in a walkthrough of the county’s electoral process. Some startling observations were noted.
Mark Cook, an IT specialist, was given the opportunity to run the county’s election operations in December 2020. Mr. Cook took some photographs and they appeared in the report along with some observations.
Here are some observations:
One of the first pictures shows approximately 100 boxes in the warehouse with “Dominion Voting” and “Made in China” stamps on them. (See also image above.)
A laptop containing Dominion ballot printing software was located attached to the ballot printer.
Passwords to access the Dominion ballot printing software and to print ballots were taped to the laptop for any user to view and use.
The ballot printer was fully loaded with blank ballot paper. There were jacks on the walls of the courtroom that provided the ability to connect to the Internet.
There were numerous flash drives sitting around the place, seemingly all of them.
Another shocking observation was recorded during the walkthrough.
The cyber election team technology has seen the shelves of ballots arranged in this ballot storage room.
However, this pallet of ballots was separate from the ballots on the shelf and was dated 12/15/20 outside the plastic wrap around the ballot.
Warehouse workers have full and unsupervised access to the ballot storage room.
In searching the report from this walkthrough, the following observations were made:
- Given the photographic evidence above, and the information provided by the voter registrar, our cyber election team has concluded that it would be trivial to:
- Print unlimited ballots unattended;
- connecting the election system to an external network or the Internet during the election;
- introduce new software, firmware, voting ballots on critical election equipment via USB or portable hard drives;
- Numerous election officials and warehouse workers have unfettered access to key election systems and ballots.
- Sacramento declined to address numerous security concerns required by the grand jury before the 2020 election and instead said it would address them after the election (see exhibit).
More information is provided on The Great American Rebirth website. This includes a response from the county.
Overall, from the perspective of a professional auditor and someone who has done audits and walkthroughs around the world, these results are shocking.