Question. Your in the business of making election machines. Government contract. It pretty much has to do three things. Read a marked ballot or take a input from a voter, record it as a vote, and be able to send that vote or have that vote stored so it can be read. Why give it the hardware or the ability to be programmed to do anything else? Make it as stupid as possible so it you can build it cheap and sell it for a huge profit. Or was making it do something else is a requirement of the buyer? That is the real question
State Department wanted to use it to surreptitiously meddle in foreign elections? Can't have a different version for domestic and foreign market, or it'd be too obvious if they ever obtained a domestic model and thought to compare them.
Question. Your in the business of making election machines. Government contract. It pretty much has to do three things. Read a marked ballot or take a input from a voter, record it as a vote, and be able to send that vote or have that vote stored so it can be read. Why give it the hardware or the ability to be programmed to do anything else? Make it as stupid as possible so it you can build it cheap and sell it for a huge profit. Or was making it do something else is a requirement of the buyer? That is the real question
State Department wanted to use it to surreptitiously meddle in foreign elections? Can't have a different version for domestic and foreign market, or it'd be too obvious if they ever obtained a domestic model and thought to compare them.