Taking a page straight out of OJ Simpson's "IF I DID IT..." playbook, Northampton PA County Executive Lamont McClure made a statement just days ahead of the election that is especially delicious given what has transpired in several states:
Despite the county election commissioners issuing a vote of no confidence in December, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure said the county would continue to use the machines. The county spent $2.9 million to buy 315 in 2019, and they will all be deployed on Nov. 3. “We’re actually very confident, and we know we’ll have a fair, legal, and accurate election because of the paper ballot backup,” McClure said in an interview Tuesday. He called concerns about hacking “irresponsible.” “You would have to have an expert hacker be alone with each individual machine for more than an hour to be able to engineer something like that,” he said, adding that “doesn’t happen” in real life.
For context, in 2019, several PA counties (notably including Philadelphia, Cumberland, and Northampton counties) deployed over 2,000 ES&S voting machines which were widely panned by election officials. Northampton county election commissioners went so far to issue a vote of no confidence in the voting machines in December 2019. Additionally, Philadelphia City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart released her Voting Technology Procurement Investigation in September 2019 which detailed shenanigans dating back as far as 2013 related to the selection and installation of ES&S voting machines.
For the sake of brevity, suffice it to say that election officials across multiple states have been aware of -- yet ignored -- potential ballot fraud for years. The links in this post primarily focus on ES&S machines, but you'll find much of the same for Dominion and machines as well. These three vendors account for 80% of the country's voting machines.
Note that the Milwaukee County (and specifically, the City of Milwaukee which saw the mysterious 4am ballot dump) utilized the same ES&S ExpressVote machines that Mr. McClure was referencing with his statement above.
So, for once we can agree with NYT: "No, Software Glitches Are Not Affecting Vote Counts;" the true cause is much more nefarious than that.
But then again, we should all probably just take Mr. McClure's word for it that election officials having unfettered and unmonitored access to voting machines under the cover of darkness isn't something that happens in real life.**