Democracy Live and RAVBM?
What is it, how many voted with it, and WHO owns it?
Notes: Colored text are descriptive links to source material; any dead link can be arisen from the dead by copy/paste url into the wayback machine.
Dear Riverside County Board of Supervisors,
Hi, it’s me again. Sorry to bother you, but I had a few more questions in regards to the 2020 General Election. My questions pertain to Remote Access Vote by Mail, or RAVBM: How many voters utilized it, were the votes included in the 1% audit, and why should we the voters have confidence in future elections? We see these problems everwhere, with the same machinery/software, but are expected to believe nothing could have happened in Riverside, California? Please keep in mind, I’m not accusing anyone of anyting, I just have questions. If you you humor me for just a few minutes, I will review what I have (and now we) learned about RAVBM and Democracy Live.
The short story of ‘what is’ RAVBM is that it is software to allow the handicapped better access to voting. The voter can vote from their own home by downloading an application, marking their selections using the app in their browser, printing out those selections, and mailing them to the Registrar of Voters (RoV) in a signed envelope—any old one will do. To be clear, I see nothing wrong with that goal, as stated. There is absolutely no possibility, however, that a vote can actually be submitted over the internet (yet—in RivCo). And, completely secure. Right? Nothing to see here? Read on.
According to the California Secretary of State (SoS), any voter could request to utilize RAVBM in the Nov 3, 2020 General Election. Yes, any voter, not just the handicapped. Well, here, take a look.
But wait, there’s more! Riverside County (RivCo) uses an App called Secure Select, by a company named Democracy Live Inc, based in Seattle Washington. This August 23, 2019 SoS document shows that Bryan Finney, the CEO of Democracy Live Inc, received approval for Secure Select 1.2.2. The first link also shows that Secure Select 1.2.2 is the only approved software from Democracy Live.
It is evident that RivCo used Secure Select from this spending summary that shows after an intitial spending of $49,000 in 2016, a total of $274,880 was spent to date. That doesn’t seem like a lot, compared to the $6.1 million spent on Dominion, but then again, it’s just an App. What is the average cost of an App in your favorite App store? This website explains how to use Secure Select, a Cloud based program.
First Questions: 1. What exactly were the software updates listed in the RivCo spending? If it is an app, what hardware contains the software to be updated? Could you please explain? Were there upgrades to Omni? How many votes came in via Secure Select? Were these votes subject to signature verification? Is there a paper trail?
Speaking of App stores, we should take a look at Democracy Live’s website, so as to maybe have a better understanding of RAVBM, for they do mention that they partner with Amazon and Microsoft. Don’t you feel better already?
Democracy Live claims to have served over 10 million voter, in 2,500 jurisdictions, and in 21 states. Clearly, Secure Select is a “cloud and tablet-based” technology, which would lead on to conclude there could be some vulunerabilities. They did get a couple of keen awards though.
Head over to the ‘Our Products’ page for the challenge of finding Secure Select anywhere. Secure Select is not listed under products, only Omni. I could not find Omni on the SoS page nor anywhere in RivCo pages— not to say there isn’t any, I just couldn’t find any.
Should we try the wayback machine? Yep, this archived page shows that as recently as Jan 22, 2020 Secure Select was listed as a product—did we just use clearance-sale level software in the most important election in history? Nothing to see here? Notice how everything sounds nice and secure up to this point, no potential for fraud, none at all.
I’ll get to the criticisms in a moment but first head to the the ‘Our Team’ page, there you will see two primary team members, Bryan Finney (President Founder) and Joseph Brotherton (Chairman).
Fun fact: Bryan Finney is a Silver Level Donor in the Corporate-Affiliates program at the prestigous NASS, which is the social club for Secretaries of State. He share the honor with Facebook, Smartmatic, and Dominion. Such great company they keep! Look, Finney even got to publish a White Paper (Smartmatic got two!) amongst heavy competition, in which he extolls the cost savings of internet voting. If you’re thinking of the old adage “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” right now, you’re not alone.
What of Jeseph Brotherton you ask? What a guy! A true rennaissance man. Brotherton is an Attorney, a Teacher, an Entrepenuer, a Philanthropist, and a…Traveler. I mean wow, he does get around, to some not very suspicious places at all: Iran, Dubai, Afghanistan. He even hosts Sharia Law experts to chat about… well, the benefits of a Constitutional Representative Republic perhaps? Here, just head over to Joe’s blog, the title of which is “—Does not play well with the other children”. Joe can also be found at this Contact Out page. Comforting.
South Carolina is one of those 21 states that Democracy Live claimed to serve. This in depth investigation from The State, November 6, 2020 does raise some doubts into the reliability and security of Democracy Live’s products. The investigation and refrenced study was on Omni, Democracy Live’s new program. So if the new program was getting all of the attention…? In a MIT/University of Michigan study (worth a read), the Democracy Live product was found:
“We find that OmniBallot uses a simplistic approach to Internet voting that is vulnerable to vote manipulation by malware on the voter’s device,” wrote the researchers. “In addition, Democracy Live, which appears to have no privacy policy, receives sensitive personally identifiable information — including the voter’s identity, ballot selections, and browser fingerprint — that could be used to target political ads or disinformation campaigns.”
More Questions: 1. Will RivCo provide the data that proves RAVBM was not an issue? 2. How will RivCo assure the voters of the integrity of future elections unless they, of their own accord, intitiate a full and transparent audit of the 2020 election?
Thank you for your time, hope to chat again soon. Until then, please consider if this is who we should entrust our votes to.
Did not send to supes...yet