On Thursday, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly chose not to renew the contract with Dominion Voting Systems, the maker of voting and vote tabulation machines widely used in several locations in the United States — and also a company that is widely criticized. The contract extension was to be for five years, but many in the community want the borough to use a more secure method.
The Assembly will have to adopt its final budget by May 8 and may still renew the contract between now and then. Assemblyman Scott Crass said that if the Assembly does not renew the contract with Dominion, the Assembly members who vote against it may be subject to recall “because it’s in our code.” It sounded like a threat against those who might vote to not renew the contract.
Assemblywoman Barbara Haney said “These things could be the greatest thing since sliced bread. That’s not the point. The point is that people don’t want their tax money used like this, period.” She said no member of the public had testified in support of renewing the Dominion contract.
By ordinance the borough must use electronic scan equipment and the Assembly would need to change ordinance to rid itself of the technology for good.
The contract renewal failed on a 4-4 vote, needing 5 votes to pass. The cost of the contract is about $220,000 for five years. That’s enough to replaster the community’s swimming pool, or might be enough to keep a school open.
Dominion has gotten aggressive in defending its reputation and has threatened to sue anyone who the company says spreads lies about its machines.
A federal review of Dominion voting machines identifies software flaws in some models of ballot-marking devices made by Dominion, vulnerabilities that were discovered in Georgia. In theory, the machines could be tampered with, but there was no evidence that that occurred, federal inspectors said.
Dominion has fought back. On its website, it states:
“Dominion is focused on supporting our customers who administer U.S. elections. We are closely monitoring claims around the 2024 election. We strongly encourage people to rely upon verified, credible sources of election information – sources that can explain the many layers of physical, operational, and technical safeguards that exist to protect the integrity of our elections, including use of paper ballots for auditing and recounts. We remain fully prepared to defend our company and our customers against lies and to seek accountability from those who spread them.” Read Dominion’s fact sheet here.
The threat of litigation has put a damper on the public discourse around the integrity of vote tabulation machines and election integrity.
In the Mat-Su Borough, local voting includes hand-counted ballots, after the Mat-Su Borough Assembly chose to ditch the machine method in 2022. The borough still uses the machines as back up.
Many in the Fairbanks North Star Borough would like to follow that model and return to a counting method not relying on algorithms and the internet.
Smartest thing I’ve seen come out of Fairbanks in a while.
Good news now the Lt. Gov. and Gov. needs to get them all out of the State!
I’ll bet Mayor Hopkins didn’t like this outcome. He’s been “depending” on Dominion for all of his elections. Just ask his Uncle Dave, who sits on the Assembly.
Takes a first reading, a public hearing and a second reading to change an ordinance. Easiest thing to do. If you are comfortable with your ballot getting fed into a tabulation machine running on software code that nobody gets to see then you’re extremely gullible.
Dominion Voting Systens and SmartMatic systems are designed to manipulate the tabulation data record allowing remote access control or at a terminal interface on the other side of a locked door in a ‘counting center’ away from party observers with proxy layer emulator code on a thumb drive. DVS and SM use this technique to flip votes from one candidate to another for transmission of results to State Capitals from counting centers or precincts, and then the results can be ‘flipped back’ to cover their tracks. Study the case of Antrim County Michigan 2020 General Presidential Election.
BW: From the official investigation of the case of Antrim County Michigan 2020 General Presidential Election: “Although vulnerabilities in election technology are well documented (see, e.g., [11, 27]), the Antrim County incident was not caused by a security breach. **There is also no credible evidence that it was caused deliberately.** While this report is not a comprehensive security review of Antrims voting system, I note in passing some opportunities for security improvements.” ‘https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/sos/30lawens/Antrim.pdf?rev=fbfe881cdc0043a9bb80b783d1bb5fe9
There is, of course, possibility of hand counting the ballots, a feature that mitigates against what BW implies is inevitable fraudulent outcome.
Thanks for reporting on this Suzanne.