Damon Circosta Voted Yes

SBOE Chair Damon Circosta

Background here on the sudden last-minute switcheroo of ESandS electronic voting machines by a company that seems to have sandbagged the State Board of Elections (SBOE) into accepting what experts say is untested and eminently hackable voting equipment.

Congrats, Mecklenburg County! These machines are what your local elections officials will be using in 2020.

And, as expected, SBOE Chair Damon Circosta sided with the two Republicans on the board and split with his fellow Democrats.

WTF Is Going on at the NC Board of Elections?

BACKGROUND
Back on August 23rd, in a controversial 3-2 vote, the NC State Board of Elections (SBOE) certified electronic voting equipment made by Elections Systems and Software (ESandS) even though everyone agrees that a voter's ballot choices can't be audited. Not everyone agrees that the inability to audit the votes on those machines is any big deal, like the 3 on the SBOE in favor of certification -- two Republican members and Chair Damon Circosta.

NEW PROBLEMS WITH ESandS Electronic Machinery
A long investigative piece this week by Jordan Wilkie in the Carolina Public Press uncovers this:

Karen Brinson Bell,
Exec. Dir., SBOE

1. ESandS lobbyists -- and please note that word lobbyists -- informed the SBOE legal staff just before Thanksgiving that -- oops! -- the company can't fulfill its obligations to the state in 2020 for the voting machines certified on August 23rd. Only about 1/6th of the machines needed are available to meet the demand.

2. ESandS lobbyists suggest a different machine, an "upgrade," which was not tested and certified by the SBOE.

3. By waiting until last month to inform the SBOE that it can't meet its obligations, ESandS has effectively sandbagged the board. So the lobbyists -- the lobbyists -- suggested that since new testing and certification on the substitute machines couldn't be completed in time for use in 2020, why couldn't the administrative staff just go ahead and approve the new machinery, bypassing the appointed 5-member SBOE? Just "wave the new system through."

4. SBOE Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell recommended that the Board of Elections approve the ES&S request -- inaccurately describing, by the way, the technical changes in the new machines that raise legitimate concerns about ballot security. I mean, Brinson Bell seriously misrepresented the technical changes in the new machines in an apparent attempt to rush the SBOE into approving them, according to Jordan Wilkie's reporting.

Damon Circosta,
Chair, SBOE

5. "No way," said SBOE member Stella Anderson, who's been a consistent whistleblower about the safety of electronic voting machines. "Holding on to the information of an equipment shortage until the last minute, the irregular channel of communicating that information [lobbyists], inaccurately disclosing the location where the machines are manufactured and not notifying the board of problems with the current system until after it was certified are all part of a 'clear pattern of actions on the part of ESandS that represent a fundamental lack of candor in the certification process,' ” Anderson wrote her fellow board members in an email. Anderson's whistleblowing has prompted a special SBOE meeting next week to hash this out.

6. The big question for next week: Will SBOE Chair Damon Circosta continue his unaccountable soft spot for ESandS electronic equipment? Will he vote with the Republicans to certify new equipment that hasn't been adequately tested or hasn't gone through the normal mandated certification process?

Governor Cooper Defends Damon Circosta

The NAACP and a group of ballot security experts have called for Governor Roy Cooper to oust Damon Circosta from the NC State Board of Elections. Gov. Cooper said yesterday, "No way, no how."

Well, not exactly. What Governor Cooper did was send out his spokesman armed with verbal bubblewrap meant to protect Circosta from the blows: “The security of our elections is the number one priority of the State Board of Elections. This includes ballot and voting machine security, ensuring against voter intimidation and discrimination in all forms, freedom from long lines, and making sure that voting is as easy and hassle free as possible. The Governor believes the board is focused on these concerns.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the views and actions of Circosta but also not a step toward ousting him.

We've been critical of Circosta's cavalier attitude toward certifying electronic voting machines that the experts say are not safe from hacking, starting with his surprise vote back on August 23. Evidence piled up after that vote to demonstrate a curious lack of interest on Circosta's part for ballot safety (here and here and here, for examples). His stubborn attachment to machinery that computer experts say is not secure baffles me. Always has.

Hope the governor's confidence is not misplaced.

NC Still in the Wilderness Over Potentially Unsafe Electronic Voting Equipment

A new letter addressed this week to the NC State Board of Elections (SBOE) from electronic voting machine experts and fair voting advocates charges that in its certification of new machinery for NC elections -- the vote on August 23rd when new SBOE Chair Damon Circosta voted with the Republicans -- the SBOE violated North Carolina law. "The law requires a security review of the source code of all voting systems before they are certified for use in the state." According to the experts, no security review of source code was conducted. According to Carolina Public Press,

The experts in question, including Duncan Buell, a professor of computer science at the University of South Carolina, reviewed testing documentation from the state and from the federal government.

“You read all of that, and it’s clear,” Buell said. “There was no source code review conducted. That would certainly seem to suggest that things are not in accordance with North Carolina law.” 

The law details an extensive list of components to be reviewed, including “application vulnerability, application code, wireless security, security policy and processes … security organization and governance, and operational effectiveness.”

Just last week, on September 5, SBOE member Stella Anderson got Circosta to vote with her to demand that SBOE staff produce any documentation of source code review. The SBOE next meets on October 1, and Carolina Public Press reports that SBOE staff is striving to supply the information requested in Anderson's September 5 motion. That's "too long to wait," claimed the computer experts who wrote the most recent letter:

In order for counties to buy the new equipment, each county’s board of elections needs to attend a demonstration of the voting systems, recommend one to their county commissioners for purchase, test that system in the October or November elections, then purchase and deploy them by the March 2020 primaries. 

Counties are moving quickly to enter into multimillion-dollar contracts to purchase this equipment. 

“What the state board is doing is irresponsible in letting these counties proceed as if they are going to go to contract and not letting them know that there is a serious black cloud over the certification,” [Marilyn] Marks [Coalition for Good Government] said.

Today's SBOE Action -- Republican Members Continue To Line Up Against Voting Machine Security

BREAKING NEWS
SBOE Chair Damon Circosta reluctantly agreed to vote for Democrat Stella Anderson's motion -- which passed 3-2 -- for SBOE staff to properly test and subsequently ensure that all NC-approved voting machines meet the security requirements of state and federal law. I say "reluctantly" because Mr. Circosta started the discussion by stating he thought the motion might be better contained in a "directive" to the staff. Anderson wanted a vote of the Board, and she got it.

Her motion was much more technical and involved than the first sentence above reflects, but I think I caught the gist of it.

Lynn Bernstein of Transparent Elections had charged that "NC didn't follow their own requirements for certification of election systems. This cannot be disregarded by the state and will not be ignored by election security advocates & voters." Anderson's motion would appear to be reaction to that charge, and is commendable anyway for trying to ensure that ESandS voting machines, for example, are not merely safe but really most sincerely safe.

The two Republican members of the SBOE -- David Black and Ken Raymond -- voted against Anderson's motion and offered no reasons for their votes.

The meeting was conducted via telephone, and no public comments were taken.

The Postman Turned On His Magic Beam: SBOE Gets a Letter

Damon Circosta

The State Board of Elections (SBOE) will meet this Thursday, September 5th. It's not gonna be a quiet meeting (see below for how to hear it). Turns out, there's gonna be plenty pressure on it from a coalition of election security advocates alleging that North Carolina law was not followed in the August 23rd vote of the board to certify the voting equipment of ESandS and two other vendors. The advocates, including Lynn Bernstein of Cary, have written a strongly worded letter to Chair Damon Circosta and to the other four members urging them to revisit that vote.

They say that certain electronic voting equipment isn't safe from hacking. Damon Circosta claims it is. The letter warns that the rights of the people to fair elections isn't being properly shielded, and those rights should come first, and pronto.

"The certification of the voting systems occurred August 23, only 10 days ago. The State Board should immediately revisit the decision before counties and vendors expend resources and make expensive irreversible decisions based on flawed certifications."

To recap recent history: It was a surprise 3-2 SBOE decision on August 23rd, with newly appointed Democratic Chair Circosta joining the two Republican members in opposing a motion made by Democrat Stella Anderson to demand voter-readable proof of ballot choices from electronic machinery. Anderson and fellow Democrat Jeff Carmon were voted down. Virtually every progressive in the state went "Huh?" Some went stronger. It's written up here. 

Advocates who signed the letter:

Marilyn Marks, Coalition for Good Government, Charlotte
Susan Greenhalgh, National Election Defense Coalition, New York
Lynn Bernstein, Transparent Elections NC, Cary

They ask that the hearing on Thursday not limit public comment and that each speaker -- many of them experts who'll be brought in by the advocate groups listed above -- be given 3 minutes instead of 2.

In its most potentially litigious passage, the letter warns the board that excessive use of closed attorney-client meetings, with the public shut out of the discussion, will be challenged:

"...There is no pending litigation that would justify closed door litigation strategy discussions with the Board’s attorneys. The topics that are so sensitive as to require private sessions are quite limited when it comes to the public’s voting systems. Any attempt to liberally construe the Board’s opportunity to conduct executive sessions without strict compliance with the law will be carefully monitored and subject to legal challenge."

If stuff gets discussed in executive sessions, it'll take a whistle-blower on the inside to demand the sun shine in. No one on the outside of those meetings will know what's being said.

NOTE

The meeting in Raleigh on Thursday is at 1:00 pm in the Dobbs Building. Anyone can listen by phone, and it's free: Dial: (415) 655-0052 and enter on prompt the Code: 212-929-441.

OMG, BMDs in GA and NC Too! WTF?

Damon Circosta,
new chair of the NC SBE

The Election Systems and Software (ESandS) balloting machinery that Damon Circosta declared last Friday is safe enough for him, and then voted to certify for use in North Carolina counties in 2020 -- those machines are also known in the industry as BMDs, "ballot-marking devices." After a voter touches his choices on a display screen, the machine produces a piece of paper with barcodes representing those choices along with a printed list of what those barcodes purport to mean -- the names of candidates.

The problem is that there's no way to verify that indeed the barcode actually matches the printed list.

In the Age of Trump, verification is all.

Chair of the SBOE Damon Circosta knows why he voted the way he voted. I don't. Apparently, he had ulterior motives that I don't fully understand -- something to do with what might happen in the General Assembly if certain vendors are denied their business interests in North Carolina. Maybe that's a legitimate concern. I don't know. But I've never thought it a compelling argument to worry about what other people might do if I do the right thing.

Here's where North Carolina is today following those votes last Friday: We're now in the same bad place as Georgia. On August 15, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg banned Georgia’s current untrustworthy touchscreen voting machines. You may recall the huge uproar following the close 2018 election for Georgia governor between Ga. Sec'ty of St. Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams. In Georgia, the Secretary of State runs the election machinery, maintains the voter rolls, and tallies the vote. Brian Kemp held onto that power until the day after last November's election, when he resigned the office. The voting in Georgia was done on very hackable touchscreen machines, the ones Judge Tottenberg ruled out on August 15, not that anyone has proven that hacking took place in the 2018 Georgia governor race. What did take place and was ultimately worse perhaps was the disenfranchisement of black voters: "3,000 people were wrongly flagged by the state as being ineligible to vote, and 53,000 voter registrations were delayed by Kemp's office without adequately notifying the applicants" (Wikipedia).

(The General Assembly of North Carolina had already passed legislation banning touchscreen machines that produce no paper record, making their use impossible in 2020. The ESandS BMD's, with their printed barcodes, are now certified as legit replacements.)

And guess what -- Judge Tottenberg's ruling came in Georgia coincidentally on the heels of the new Republican Secretary of State's announced intent to purchase BMDs for use in Georgia in 2020 (some or most from ESandS?). That decision is causing a very similar outcry down there among balloting watchdogs and experts. For example, Richard DeMillo (the Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Professor of Computing, former dean of the College of Computing and Director of the Center for Information Security Research at Georgia Tech and previously Chief Technology Officer at Hewlett-Packard) warned yesterday in the Atlanta Constitution:

History is poised to repeat itself. There is a growing consensus among experts that the BMDs slated to replace the current system have all the cyber vulnerabilities of the old system plus some appalling new wrinkles like forcing voters to cast bar-coded ballots that are unreadable by human beings. The lone cybersecurity expert on the governor’s own election security task force strongly urged the legislature to reject BMDs. Experts from the U.S. National Academy of Science (NAS), Verified Voting Foundation, the National Election Defense Coalition, Freedom Works, Common Cause, and many others, agreed and wrote letters urging rejection of BMDs. Conservative Republicans like national security expert Tony Shaffer joined Libertarians, Democrats, and Independents in condemning the use of BMDs.

Those same objections to BMDs were voiced quite clearly last Friday in North Carolina too, and Damon Circosta supposedly heard them quite clearly before he voted to ignore the warnings. He knows best why all that testimony meant exactly zero to him, and so far he has failed to tell us why.

So What's Damon Circosta's Deal?

Foreign intrusions into the 2016 elections have been proven. I'm not just talking Facebook manipulation and Wikileaks. Also proven: Russian hackers attempted penetration into the actual voting machinery of 21 states in 2016 -- no kidding! -- and although we were told that none of those hacks actually gained access to the ability to change vote tallies, those worms burrowed deep into the heart of our cabbage.

For one example, "In 2016, the Illinois Board of Elections acknowledged that voter data had been breached. Hackers were inside the system for several weeks and were downloading data when they were caught, though they did not alter any files."

So relax, the hack wasn't successful. That's what we were told back early in 2018. We're told a lot of things.

In this current national reality of greatest insecurity, there's only one explanation I can think of (but see below) for Republican officials' refusing to take steps to increase the security of our balloting systems: They welcome an intrusion that helps their side win. They must assume that any hack by the current crop of foreign computer malefactors would be in the greater GOP's favor, while not also considering for a moment that there's more than one nation of hacker nerds wanting to play havoc with us. Republicans have something to gain -- they think -- from insecure voting systems. They're playing the odds in a very dangerous game.

Do you have another credible, logical explanation for why two Republican members of the NC State Board of Elections (SBOE) -- David Black and Ken Raymond -- would vote yesterday afternoon against requiring vendors to guarantee their systems can be audited -- audited first, and visually, by the voter on a paper ballot and then by the Elections Board counting machinery? Why would two Republicans on that very Elections Board want to allow systems that are 100% unauditable? At a time when computers and bar codes manage our lives and clever black hats know how to penetrate via Internet any computer on the planet and there make mischief -- why wouldn't Republican guardians of the public trust want to increase trust?

I don't want to think of Republicans as stupid -- which, let's face it, is actually another credible explanation for the David and Raymond votes yesterday. I know they're not stupid. Therefore, they must have corrupt intent.

But why did Democrat Damon Circosta lead the "no" vote?

Damon Circosta
WRAL TV

Why would the newly appointed Chair of the SBOE, a kind of folk hero among left-leaning non-profits and do-gooders everywhere, on his very first action after being appointed by Governor Roy Cooper, why would he vote against demanding greater accountability from voting machine vendors?

Carolina Public Press (CPP) reported:

After the meeting, a reporter asked Circosta if he agreed with the security concerns. 

“I disagree,” Circosta said. “I fundamentally disagree.” 

Members of the board were asked to identify the information and experts they used to come to their decisions. CPP asked Circosta for references to the research he used to form his decision. He did not respond, but instead provided, through the board’s press secretary, links to the Davie and Transylvania county statements advocating that system certifications not be changed.

I listened in on that SBOE meeting yesterday. I heard every word that Damon Circosta uttered leading up to the vote when he suddenly went against Stella Anderson's well publicized motion. He said he had been contacted by election board officials in different counties -- well, Transylvania and Davie, to be precise -- and otherwise he offered no rebuttal evidence against the expert testimony presented in Stella Anderson's initiative. Nor did he address the unanimous urging of public speakers -- 20 of them -- some of them also expert in voting machine technology as well as representatives from the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, DemocracyNC, and other public advocacy groups that are already discussing immediate litigation.

(The only person who spoke against Anderson's motion was the rep of the very voting machine vendor that can't certify an audit of their machines -- Election Systems and Software (ESandS). That company stands to make millions selling those machines in North Carolina, because Circosta also voted, a little later in the meeting and along with the two Republicans again, to certify ESandS as a legit vendor. The state's 100 county boards of election can choose to buy those 100% unauditable electronic machines, with absolutely no worries.)

Stupid, in this case, does immediately come to mind. And images of surfer dudes.

I don't think Damon Circosta is stupid. Some on social media are calling him a "sell-out," which implies he has something to gain. I don't believe that either. So I'm flummoxed. Maybe he just wants to be seen as completely independent, which in this case also looks very much like being completely untethered to reality.

Governor Roy Cooper is already getting blamed for this latest malfunction of democracy. Brad Friedman on Pacifica Radio sarcastically thanked North Carolina's governor for appointing such a brilliant new chair to the SBOE. (Here's the audio -- bashing of Roy Cooper for appointing Damon Circosta occurs soon after minute 22.)

Cooper has been singularly unlucky in the chairs he's appointed to the SBOE. His first pick, Andy Penry, had to resign for posting partisan shit on social media. His second, Josh Malcolm, was unjustifiably hounded by Republicans for having private conversations with county elections officials in the notorious Bladen County ballot fraud case -- hounded until the governor lost confidence in him and Malcolm voluntarily withdrew. (Malcolm was the best chair -- maybe ever -- and should have been made chair again instead of Damon Circosta, IMO.) Malcolm was followed by Bob Cordle of Welsh Cow fame.

Now we have an SBOE Chair of mysterious and indecipherable certitude, while North Carolina voters in counties where Election Systems and Software reigns can have no trust in the outcome.

BREAKING: Damon Circosta Votes With the Republicans on Ballot Security

Good Lord.

A vote of 3-2 against Stella Anderson's first motion to change the certification demands for electronic voting equipment.

Did Governor Cooper know that Damon Circosta was going to throw a clod in the churn over the certifying of voting equipment that many people can't and won't trust?

Gov. Cooper Appoints Damon Circosta to the SBOE

Yesterday Governor Roy Cooper appointed Damon Circosta, executive director of the charitable A.J. Fletcher Foundation, to replace Bob Cordle on the North Carolina Board of Elections (SBOE). Circosta was officially an unaffiliated voter when Cooper previously appointed him in March 2018 to the 9-member SBOE, a board that was later dissolved because of legal action. Circosta changed his political affiliation to Democrat to be appointed yesterday.

Cue the Republican outrage. Sen. Ralph Hise, who knows plenty about partisan power grabs, whined that Cooper chose “power politics” over legitimacy and fairness by not appointing someone all parties respect. “Governor Cooper isn’t even pretending that he cares about good government. By appointing Damon Circosta to the Board today as the tie-breaking Democrat, he’s admitting that his previous appointment of Circosta as an ‘unaffiliated’ member was a sham.”

Circosta is a lawyer. Previously, he led the North Carolina Center for Voter Education, an organization dedicated to improving the electoral process. He serves as a professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. 

With the SBOE back at full membership, they will have to meet and elect a chair. Then on August 23rd, they will be voting on member Stella Anderson's motion to amend the certification process for electronic voting machines in the state.

The Action Today at the SBEEE: Republicans Cave

WEDNESDAY, March 21 -- Here was the Republican dilemma today in Raleigh as their newly designed State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement (SBEEE) met for the first time. Everyone was expecting total impasse, which is what we got a lot of, at least at first, but rumor had it that Governor Roy Cooper was itching to take any 4-4 board impasse and failure to follow the law to court to prove by definitive example how wrongheaded Republican schemes are. So, on the one hand, while Republicans automatically thwart and overpower the Democratic governor at every opportunity, they could not afford to shut the process down today. Though they wanted to.

Andy Penry

Maybe they weren't counting on the strength of Andy Penry. The governor had appointed Penry chair when he appointed all eight. Penry is a Democrat, and as mandated in the Republican law, his service extends only to this July, when a Republican must take the chair and hold it through the elections of 2018.

From the beginning Penry was no nonsense and by the book, quoting the new law to his Republican friends and making them follow it, and showing every indication that he, like the governor, was fully prepared to go to court to have this entire new board thrown out for not being able to act.

Follow along:

The first gambit of the Republicans -- delay nominating anyone. Delay. But Chair Penry, again reading the language of the law the Republicans had passed, pointed out they had only 14 days to nominate the ninth member and have him/her appointed by the governor.  14 days from today, according to statute. Penry said he wouldn't support a delay, and that gambit died.

The most vocal for delay: Republican member John Malachi Lewis, who also happens to be deputy counsel for the North Carolina Republican Party and who otherwise has no visible connection to the legal community nor the community of Mount Pleasant. He makes a motion to recess the meeting for a week and in the meantime take out newspaper advertising for a job opening on the SBEEE.

Lewis's motion fails 4-4.

Josh Malcolm nominates Damon Circosta and Gerry Cohen.

Lewis jumps in and says he was getting ready to nominate Gerry Cohen himself. What? In fact, Cohen likely knew it, since he had just this week changed his party affiliation from D to U. Did Malcolm know the Republicans had been talking to Cohen? And did Malcolm deliberately call their bluff? Democrat Malcolm moved to approve Circosta and Cohen. The Republicans voted no, and the motion failed. Penry is prepared to bang the gavel and adjourn the meeting: "Is there any further business to come before the Board?"

Lewis nominates former Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Burley Mitchell. Mitchell, it comes out, has also recently changed his affiliation from D to U. Lewis has no second nominee, and Penry demands it. Lewis doesn't want to say who else, and Republicans want to vote on one nominee at a time. (No mention of Gerry Cohen at this point. That's odd.) Chair Penry objects to one nominee at a time. Lead counsel to the board, Josh Lawson, says he doesn't believe there is anything barring a process of voting on one nominee at a time. Lewis therefore nominates Burley Mitchell alone. Malcolm slams that door shut: "No motion is going to pass today with only one name" (Melissa Boughten). Penry agrees. "Is there any further business to come before the Board?" He's got that gavel in his hand, ready to bring it down.

Lewis then nominates Burley Mitchell and Gerry Cohen. A 10-minute break is called.

After the break, the Republicans come back with another gambit: Republican Ken Raymond of Winston-Salem wants to put three names in a hat and draw two: Circosta, Mitchell, and Cohen. Motion fails. Penry: "Any further business?"

Then another Republican gambit (are we up to four?): Lewis moves the nomination of Burley Mitchell and Gerry Cohen. Democrats vote no. Motion fails.

Democrat Malcolm then splits the baby: He nominates Circosta and Mitchell. Dems vote yes. Republicans vote no. Motion fails.

Penry for sure is going to adjourn the meeting as a textbook example of inability to take official action, when the Republicans cave. Did they during that ten-minute break give the honor of admitting defeat to member Stacy C. Eggers IV? "In the spirit of bipartisanship," Four calls for a revote on the team of Circosta and Mitchell. All the Republicans fall in line, and the board votes unanimously for Circosta and Mitchell.

Take one guess who Governor Cooper will choose:


Damon Circosta -- 

Executive Director and Vice President of the A J Fletcher Foundation. Quoting from that website:

"Damon has been in the nonprofit sector since 2007 and headed AJF since 2012. A native of Arizona, he moved to the Triangle just as quickly as he could and has called North Carolina home since 2005. Previously, Damon led the North Carolina Center for Voter Education, an organization dedicated to improving the electoral process. He is a graduate of the University of Arizona School of Law. He is passionate about surfing, helping nonprofits thrive, his family, and the community he calls home. He is kinda-sorta thinking about a paleo diet and seeking new athletic endeavors now that his knees are asking him to give up the old ones. He vehemently opposes Daylight Savings Time."

Burley Mitchell --

Democrat Burley Mitchell had already served as an associate justice on the NC Supreme Court since 1982 when Governor Jim Hunt appointed him Chief Justice in 1995. He served until his retirement in 1999, after a total of 30 years on the court. In 2011 he was presented with the Liberty Bell Award by the Young Lawyers Division of the North Carolina Bar Association. As a member of the UNC university system's board of trustees, Mitchell angrily demanded a full investigation of bogus classes and automatic good grades given to UNC-Chapel Hill athletes, and he recently came out strongly against the Republican plan to "reorganize" the North Carolina judiciary.  He also presumably and very recently changed his voter registration from D to U.

UPDATE
Republican operative Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the NC Republican Party, has already announced the Republican "remedy" for what went down today: A constitutional amendment on the ballot in November to fix the SBEEE permanently with four Republicans and four Democrats, the ninth member go hang! Because obviously 4-4 works so well.

FURTHER UPDATE
Governor Roy Cooper has appointed Damon Circosta as the ninth member.