Allegations of Election Irregularities by Gregory Stenstrom of Marque Star

Mendel

Senior Member.
The GOP Pennsylvania Senate Policy Committee held a public hearing to discuss 2020 election issues and irregularities on November 25 in Gettysburg, PA. One of the speakers was Gregory Stenstrom.



Transcript:
Article:
Gregory Stenstrom: (52:54)
It's a tough group to follow. My name is Gregory Stenstrom. I'm from Delaware County. I'm a father, a family man. I was a former commanding officer, an executive officer in the Navy. I'm a veteran of foreign wars. I'm a CEO of my own private company. I'm a data scientist. I'm a forensic computer scientist. I'm an expert in security and fraud. Leah had recruited me for this election, and I was glad. I thank you for that.

Leah Hoopes: (53:24)
Thank you.

Gregory Stenstrom: (53:25)
So, for the first part of the day, I was a poll watcher in the city of Chester. And I was with just another former US Marine officer. And the two of us were the only GOP poll watchers in the city of Chester, which is about 40,000 people. Because of the consolidation for COVID, there were seven polls that we were able to make it to in 22 precincts. What we saw out there was pretty orderly and exciting. People were excited to vote. One of the things we saw out in the field was that quite a few people had done mail-in ballots. So, they came in, and they hadn't been updated in the Delaware County database yet. So, they would come in and say, "The database is not showing me on the database. I'd like to vote."

Gregory Stenstrom: (54:16)
One of the processes was to give them a provisional ballot, and then, they would vote provisionally. And then, later on, their vote would be sorted out. That didn't happen. I observed, and the gentleman that was with me, observed seven different polls where the people were given a regular ballot. So, they cast a vote and put it in. We let it happen a few times. We didn't jump all over them. It happened a couple of times. We went up. In all cases, the election judges were very forthcoming, very polite. They apologized, and they said they couldn't do it. But that somewhat spurred me to go down to the counting center, which Leah described. It's on the Seaport Ave. It's a remote building, not much around it. And I wanted to take a look. All day long, I had been told that there were 10 to 20 GOP poll watchers down there, and that everything was well in hand. And out of curiosity, I decided to go down.

Gregory Stenstrom: (55:17)
I arrived at 6 [o'clock] with four other gentlemen, again, foreign military and some good citizens from Delaware County. And we weren't allowed to get in until 11 [o'clock] at night, and we had to get some legal help to get us in. So, it took us five hours to get upstairs. After that, what I saw is, I really think the crux of this in Delaware County is… As an expert in this, I think it's impossible to verify the validity of about 100,000 to 120,000 votes. Now, Delaware County has got 425,000 registered voters. Approximately 300,000 of them voted. I don't know what the exact number ended up. Mayor Giuliani nailed that number. But of that number, over 100,000 are in question in my mind. What I saw, as a forensics expert, was an election process that was forensically destructive in the manner it was conducted with the envelopes being separated from the ballots and going to the other side of the room. And the problem with that from being forensically destructive is that when you go to do a recount, okay, the machines did a pretty good job of recounting.

Gregory Stenstrom: (56:37)
So, if I have 120,000 ballots, mail-in ballots at one side of the room and envelopes at the other side of the room is still going to come out 100, 2,000 votes for Vie President Biden and 18,000 votes for President Trump. I don't care how many times you recount those votes. The ballot's going to come out the same every time. So, the notion of a recount in a forensically destructive process is, it doesn't work very well. What we saw there, what I saw there was a chain of custody. In all cases, it was broken. It was broken for the mail-in ballots, the drop box ballots, the election day USBV card flash drives. In all cases, the chain of custody and the procedures that were defined by the Delaware County Board of Elections and election process review were all… They didn't follow one.

Gregory Stenstrom: (57:28)
I couldn't even redline this multi-page document because the entire document would be they didn't follow any of the procedures. So, I personally observed USBV cards being uploaded to voting machines by the voting machine warehouse supervisor on multiple occasions. I saw this personally. I brought it to the attention of the deputy sheriff, who was there, stationed, who was a senior law enforcement officer. And I brought it to the attention of the clerk of elections. I brought it to their attention. I objected. And I said, "This person is not being observed. He's not part of the process that I can see." And he's walking in with baggies, which we have pictures of, and it was submitted in our affidavits. And he was sticking these USBs into the machines. So, I personally witnessed, that happened 24 times, over 24 times. We have multiple other witnesses that saw it, including Democrat poll watchers.

Gregory Stenstrom: (58:31)
And I was told the next day by the solicitors… Well, actually, not the solicitor, but the attorney that we had secured, that they said, "Every election, they leave a couple of USBs in the voting machines, and they're brought back. And generally, the warehouse manager comes over and puts them in." So, in talking to the US Attorney General McSwain and other law enforcement officers, I found out that was not the case, that generally, more than two is unusual. So, they denied they did it. But as of today, 47 USBV cards are missing, and they're nowhere to be found. So, I was told personally that these 24 to 30 cards that were uploaded weren't there. Those cards, I demanded that they… They didn't update the vote lifetime. They only updated it about once every two or three hours.

Gregory Stenstrom: (59:33)
I demanded they updated the vote so I could see what the result was, and it was 50,000 votes. And I think as a computer scientist, an American, and a Patriot, it doesn't matter who those 50,000 votes were. I'll tell you they were for Vice President Biden. But what was shocking to me, as an American, as someone who has gone to sea, gone to war that that could even happen. So, several other things that came up was on Thursday, it took us three days for them to obey the court order that I secured with Leah's help and the help of the Thomas More Society, who we thank. Incredibly good patriots. They got us in there. They got the order for us to get in and look at the back offices, which were locked, for five minutes every two hours. I went in. I was the first one allowed to go in at 1:30 on Thursday, and then, again at 3:30 for five minutes.

Gregory Stenstrom: (01:00:42)
The County solicitor had a stopwatch. On the first time, I was not allowed to touch anything. The second time, I did. What I observed in the locked room in the back office was 70,000 unopened mail-in ballots. They were in boxes of 500 stacked in neatly. The gentlemen that came in with me was a Democrat poll watcher, is a forensic pathologist, a very detailed, very dedicated man. And he took meticulous notes as well. And I verified with him, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" We both agreed, as GOP poll watchers and a Democrat poll watcher, that we had a witnessed 60 to 70,000. We had a little bit of a disagreement there. The problem with that was by that time, the mail-in ballots had already been counted.

Gregory Stenstrom: (01:01:37)
So, 120,000 mail-in ballots had already been counted, posted, and done. My question is, where did the 70,000 ballots go? And nobody knows. We have a picture in here of a large number of boxes that I took that were filled with what appeared to be ballots sitting by the BlueCrest machine. They were there for about three hours, and then, they disappeared. I thought it notable when I watched it, the first when taking the ballots up and down. I said, "I am an expert in fraud." I saw the ballots going up multiple elevators and racks. And I think a lot of well-meaning people and a lot of honest people were there doing that. They were trying to participate in the process. And I would say that 99% of the people there, the way the process was designed, I believe that people thought it was a non-fraudulent process.

Gregory Stenstrom: (01:02:34)
I heard that said many times. I said, "There's no fraud going on here." I said, "Well, I'm not…" I didn't even bring that up. But I think people saw what they wanted to see, and they saw what was intended for them to see. I called it, at one point, Kabuki theater. I said, "It was all designed for us to see it. It was entertaining. There were cameras on it." When we finally got into the back room where the votes were being ingested, as a data scientist, I want to see where the data's coming in. And I wanted to know the universe of the votes. Well, the universe of the votes was only supposed to be 120,000 mail-in ballots. We were told there were 6,000 ballots remaining. So, I said, "Okay, we have a universe of 126,000 votes." And then, when I get back there, the universe wasn't 126,000 votes. The universe was 200,000 votes. So, that's a problem.

Gregory Stenstrom: (01:03:28)
A couple of other things is, the BlueCrest sorter machine was only manned by one person. People ask me all the time, "How do people commit crimes?" I know there's a lot of theories here. And I always look for the simplest thing. People are sticking USB sticks in, putting ballots in, very simple thing. Only takes a couple of people. It doesn't take a big conspiracy. I think people look at things, and they use inflammatory words, like fraud and so forth. As a forensic computer scientist, my interest is in the data. Where did it go? Where…

Gregory Stenstrom: (01:04:03)
My interest is in the data. Where did it go? Where did the [spoilage] go? How did the data come in and go out of the system? So I think as a scientist we need to look at that and we need to audit that. What was really upsetting to me, most upsetting, was I had spoke to multiple law enforcement agencies and literally begged multiple law enforcement agencies, I said, "Go in." And I said in order to prove that nothing's happening and either exonerate yourselves from the process or refute what I'm saying, please, it's a very simple process, just go get the forensic evidence from the computers. It's a simple process, you turn the computer off, it's nondestructive, takes moments, maybe half an hour, 20 minutes, to do it properly and collect the evidence. You open the computer up, you take a device called a bit blocker, you put it in the hard drive, it's done under the observation of law enforcement officers, you take a forensic image of the drive, put it all back together, it wouldn't have taken more than an hour to image all five machines. That was never done, despite my objections and that was three weeks ago.

Gregory Stenstrom: (01:05:15)
Lastly, when they said, "Well we've got all the forensic records and so forth," we just learned two days ago that virtual all chain of custody logs, records, yellow sheets, everything, was gone. All forensic evidence, all custody sheets in [Delaware] County are gone. They had a signing party where they sat down and poll workers were invited back to recreate those logs and our understanding is as of today, was that they were unsuccessful in getting them all. So we have a situation in where we have 100,000 to 120,000 ballots, both mail in and USB, that are in question. Now there's no cure for this, there's no remedy for this. As a home charter we could have a re-election in Delaware County for our own representatives within our own town. But there is no cure for that for the president of the United States. And I don't believe, as a citizen and an observer to this, that anybody could certify that vote in any good conscience.

Gregory Stenstrom: (01:06:33)
And if the democrats, that have a part of this process, had done things, followed their own procedures, which they created almost unilaterally, we would be in a situation where they could exonerate themselves and they could say, "Mr. [Stenstrom], you've been misinformed. We have evidence here that refutes what you say." But that's not the case. They can't do that. So I say if you can't certify that vote, and you can't certify 100,000 votes out of 300,000, then you can't certify Delaware County. And I'm done and thank you for your time and patience.
 
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This is not testimony, and this is not a hearing. This was a man talking at an unofficial meeting in a hotel.

Comments from this twitter thread

External Quote:
For an expert, he doesn't know what he is talking about! There are USB flash drives and USB card readers but not USB cards!

This "testimony" was complete bunk. They don't even use Dominion machines in Delaware County. They use Hart Intercivic Verity Central machines for scanning absentee ballots and those are fully auditable. https://hartintercivic.com/wp-content/uploads/VerityCentral.pdf…

These machines all have diagnostics. And the centres have video. What he is suggesting would have an audit trail. BTW, no names of people involved? More 'evidence with no substance'.
 
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One guy on their leadership page has a photo of Frank Sinatra
https://marquestar.com/leadership/
2020-11-27_08-27-10.jpg


This could to be him (Evidence: unusual name, based in PA, owner of a sporting good store, making comments about stolen election)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-barnabei-5a863474/
2020-11-27_08-31-25.jpg


Odd interest there, HH Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai.
 
His allegations need to be sorted out.

External Quote:

Gregory Stenstrom: (53:25)
So, for the first part of the day, I was a poll watcher in the city of Chester. And I was with just another former US Marine officer. And the two of us were the only GOP poll watchers in the city of Chester, which is about 40,000 people. Because of the consolidation for COVID, there were seven polls that we were able to make it to in 22 precincts. What we saw out there was pretty orderly and exciting. People were excited to vote. One of the things we saw out in the field was that quite a few people had done mail-in ballots. So, they came in, and they hadn't been updated in the Delaware County database yet. So, they would come in and say, "The database is not showing me on the database. I'd like to vote."

Gregory Stenstrom: (54:16)
One of the processes was to give them a provisional ballot, and then, they would vote provisionally. And then, later on, their vote would be sorted out. That didn't happen. I observed, and the gentleman that was with me, observed seven different polls where the people were given a regular ballot. So, they cast a vote and put it in. We let it happen a few times. We didn't jump all over them. It happened a couple of times. We went up. In all cases, the election judges were very forthcoming, very polite. They apologized, and they said they couldn't do it.
#1 - Saying that people are voting twice. Already submitted mail ballot. Coming into polling place. Given regular ballot rather than provisional ballot.



External Quote:

But that somewhat spurred me to go down to the counting center, which Leah described. It's on the Seaport Ave. It's a remote building, not much around it. And I wanted to take a look. All day long, I had been told that there were 10 to 20 GOP poll watchers down there, and that everything was well in hand. And out of curiosity, I decided to go down.

Gregory Stenstrom: (55:17)
I arrived at 6:00 with four other gentlemen, again, foreign military and some good citizens from Delaware County. And we weren't allowed to get in until 11: 00 at night, and we had to get some legal help to get us in. So, it took us five hours to get upstairs. After that, what I saw is, I really think the crux of this in Delaware County is… As an expert in this, I think it's impossible to verify the validity of about 100,000 to 120,000 votes. Now, Delaware County has got 425,000 registered voters. Approximately 300,000 of them voted. I don't know what the exact number ended up. Mayor Giuliani nailed that number. But of that number, over 100,000 are in question in my mind. What I saw, as a forensics expert, was an election process that was forensically destructive in the manner it was conducted with the envelopes being separated from the ballots and going to the other side of the room. And the problem with that from being forensically destructive is that when you go to do a recount, okay, the machines did a pretty good job of recounting.

Gregory Stenstrom: (56:37)
So, if I have 120,000 ballots, mail-in ballots at one side of the room and envelopes at the other side of the room is still going to come out 100, 2,000 votes for Vie President Biden and 18,000 votes for President Trump. I don't care how many times you recount those votes. The ballot's going to come out the same every time. So, the notion of a recount in a forensically destructive process is, it doesn't work very well.
#2 - He's saying that the signature envelopes with signatures were separated from the mail ballots. This is standard practice. Keeping the ballots together with the signature ballot would make it a non-secret ballot.

Some explanation is in order. These are instructions from the state of Pennsylvania.

https://www.votespa.com/Voting-in-PA/Pages/Mail-and-Absentee-Ballot.aspx


External Quote:

Step 1:

ballot icon

Read the instructions carefully and mark your ballot. Be sure to complete the front and back of each page.

Step 2:

ballot being sealed in secrecy envelope

Seal your ballot in the white inner secrecy envelope that indicates official ballot. Do not place any marks on the white inner secrecy envelope.

Your ballot must be enclosed in the white inner secrecy envelope to be counted.

Step 3:

seal the secrecy envelope into the return envelope

Seal the inner secrecy envelope in the pre-addressed outer return envelope. Complete, sign and date the voter's declaration on the outside of the outer return envelope.

If you do not sign the outer return envelope, your ballot will not be counted.

[h4][/h4]
More detailed explanation. This refers to Minnesota mail ballots but the rules in that state are similar to those in Pennsylvania. Difference is that in Pennsylvania the signature envelope and the mailing envelope are one in the same.

https://www.lwvmn.org/league-news/2...how-your-mail-in-ballot-protects-your-privacy

External Quote:

Casting a vote by mail can seem like complicated process with so many envelopes. But each step in the process has a purpose, including keeping your ballot private and secure. Below is an explanation of why there are so many steps and what the purpose of each step is.

An mail-in absentee ballot comes with three separate envelopes. Let's start with the smallest one and work towards the largest.

The smallest envelope that comes with an absentee ballot is usually a tan color. This is called the privacy or secrecy envelope or sometimes just a ballot envelope. The ballot—and nothing else!—goes directly into this envelope. The privacy envelope is used to ensure that all absentee voters have a confidential ballot. If a voter forgets to use this envelope, the vote will still be counted. Election officials will place the ballot in a privacy envelope to be counted later, as long as all the necessary information is provided on the signature envelope.

The middle envelope is the signature envelope. In Minnesota for the 2020 November election, registered voters do not need a witness signature, due to a court order. If you do not register to vote for the general election by Tuesday, October 13, 2020, you will need a witness. They serve to verify proof of residence. A witness must be a registered Minnesota voter or a public notary. The signature envelope is also labeled with a barcode which is used to track the status of the ballot. Each ballot has a unique barcode, and only one code can be assigned to any one voter at a time, which ensures a voter can only vote once.

After the signature envelope has been date stamped, it is kept in a locked room until the absentee ballot board confirms the information on the signature envelope. The information that is confirmed includes the voter registration information, and, if there is a witness, that they are a Minnesota registered voter or a public notary. If the information is incomplete or not able to be verified, the ballot is rejected and the voter is notified. Accepted ballots are then stored in a locked room until they can be counted (14 days before Election Day in 2020). When ballots are ready to be counted, the tan privacy envelope is removed from the witness signature envelope and separated. After being separated, the tan privacy envelope is taken to the area where votes will be counted. Ballots are then removed and counted. Since there is no personal information on your privacy envelope, when ballots are counted, election officials do not know who the ballot they are counting belongs to. This is how ballots are kept confidential.

The third, and largest envelope, is the mailing envelope, sometimes called a return envelope. When you have completed the information on the signature envelope (and placed the privacy envelope containing your ballot into the signature envelope), then you place it inside the mailing envelope. The mailing envelope does not contain any personal information. If there is a problem with your ballot, election officials will notify you usually either by email or phone, so your ballot does not have (or need) your return address. Similarly, you do not need to place a stamp on your mailing envelope if you are returning your absentee ballot by mail; absentee ballots have pre-paid postage.
What he's saying is that there can no longer be a "signature audit" of these ballots. This is a tactic that was used in Georgia.

https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/politics-government/election/article247371684.html

External Quote:

It's unlikely the Georgia Secretary of State's office will further examine absentee voter signatures despite calls from top Republicans ahead of the state's recount, a top election official told reporters Monday.

Top Republicans, including President Donald Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, have requested signature audits tied to Georgia's absentee voting.

Under state law, the identification or signature of voters is checked twice during the absentee voting process, and an accepted ballot can't be traced back to a signed envelope once the two are separated. The process protects ballot secrecy.

But county election officials keep the signed envelopes for two years. Currently, there's no state law requiring or outlining the process for rechecking envelope signatures against the state database after those signatures were already confirmed, said Gabriel Sterling, the state's voting system implementation manager.

"If a court orders it or if we have specific investigatory reasons, you do it," he said of auditing the signatures. "If we make a precedent of 'I don't like the outcome. Therefore, we should start investigating random parts of the process.' ...It's a bad precedent."
The signature envelopes are separated from the ballots only after a confirmation process has been completed. The signature ballots still exist. It's true that this process can only be done once.

The vague implication is that something fraudulent has happened. But it's an implication that can't be defeated because even if the signature envelopes and the ballots were reunited after the ballots were counted, they could imply that something shady happened in that process.
 
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Claim 1: [around 54:00] People who had posted a mail-in ballot that wasn't shown as received in the database came to the polls and asked to vote; they were not given a provisional ballot, but they were given a regular ballot and voted that way. This was brought to the attention of the election judges, and they didn't act on it.
I expect the election judges will testify to that, and it'll have a reasonable explanation.

Fact: [after 55:17] "Delaware County has got 425,000 registered voters. Approximately 300,000 of them voted."
Article:
Delcopa 2020 election preliminary results.png


Claim 2: [around 56:00] "What I saw [..] was an election process that was forensically destructive in the manner it was conducted with the envelopes being separated from the ballots and going to the other side of the room."
I don't see the problem with that. The vote is supposed to be secret. Because of that, the outer envelopes of mail-in ballots are separated from the inner ballot envelopes once they are verified. The separation of voter names from their ballots is a necessary feature of this process, or the votes aren't secret.

Claim 3: [around 57:00] "What we saw there, what I saw there was a chain of custody. In all cases, it was broken."
This is not alleging fraud.

Claim 4: [57:28] The "warehouse supervisor" came in with "baggies", and "he was sticking these USBs into the machines". They were told that "Every election, they leave a couple of USBs in the voting machines, and they're brought back. And generally, the warehouse manager comes over and puts them in."
It seems that some USB cards are forgotten in the voting machines in the precincts when they're first collected, and are brought in later. This is not alleging fraud. I don't know what type of voting machine Delaware County is using, and what kind of paper trail it provides. If votes were fraudulently uploaded, then that should become apparent when the paper trail is audited.

Claim 5: ""This person is not being observed. He's not part of the process that I can see." [..] We have multiple other witnesses that saw it"
It's unclear what he means by that. It seems self-contradictory.

Claim 6: [around 59:00] "But as of today, 47 USBV cards are missing, and they're nowhere to be found. So, I was told personally that these 24 to 30 cards that were uploaded weren't there."
Article:
A laptop and several memory sticks used to program Philadelphia's voting machines were stolen from a city warehouse in East Falls, officials confirmed Wednesday, setting off a scramble to investigate and to ensure the machines had not been compromised.

There was a theft happened back in September. I expect that the USBV cards used in the election are accounted for, if their data is important.

Claim 7: [59:33] "I demanded they updated the vote so I could see what the result was, and it was 50,000 votes."
He's implying that 50,000 votes were fraudulently uploaded from USBV cards that the warehouse manager put in unsupervised. There is no proof of it, though.

Claim 8: [around 1:01] "In the locked room in the back office [were] 70,000 unopened mail-in ballots. [..] By that time, the mail-in ballots had already been counted."
Aren't these the late-arriving mail-in ballots that were ordered by a court to be set aside? If Claim 1 is true, then those ballots should not be counted?

There's a lot of rambling on that, and him saying that there was no fraud and all people were honest, and then this:

Claim 9: "You open the computer up, you take a device called a bit blocker, you put it in the hard drive, it's done under the observation of law enforcement officers, you take a forensic image of the drive, put it all back together, it wouldn't have taken more than an hour to image all five machines."
I tried to find out more, Google search only finds BitLocker, which is a hard disk encryption program, not a disk imaging device. [Edit: See post #22 below.] If the computers are secured in a locked office, the evidence is still there; you only need to image the hard drives if you need to give the devices back to someone. I'm certain it'd be unwise to give a partisan self-proclaimed "computer expert" physical access to these hard drives.

Claim 10: [about 1:05:30] " All forensic evidence, all custody sheets in Delaware County are gone."
That should be provable in court if that is true. But it still won't prove fraud.
 
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So I say if you can't certify that vote, and you can't certify 100,000 votes out of 300,000, then you can't certify Delaware County.
If the existing lawsuits are any indication, this won't stand up in court. No judge is going to disenfranchise all of the absentee voters based on a case that isn't even alleging fraud. Basically, what Stenstrom is claiming here is that some things that happened were not documented to procedure, as far as he knows; but all of that likely was honest vote counting. You need to prove that someone actually committed fraud on a large scale, and there is zero evidence of that in this hearing statement.

What it does is say to the people who believe that the Democrats stole the election, "this is how they could have done it", based on an incomplete understanding of the events; the same way conspiracy theories have always been supported, from aliens to 9/11. If you want to believe, you'll believe.
 
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External Quote:
The "warehouse supervisor" came in with "baggies", and "he was sticking these USBs into the machines". They were told that "Every election, they leave a couple of USBs in the voting machines, and they're brought back. And generally, the warehouse manager comes over and puts them in."
We need to verify what voting system was used to count mail ballots. We need to figure out what he means by "sticking these USBs into the machines."

https://www.delcopa.gov/publicrelations/releases/2019/newvotingsystem.html

External Quote:
Delaware County Council unanimously voted to purchase Hart Verity 2.3.4 Voting System during the Oct. 23 public council meeting. The system, as well as supporting items, will be purchased through the PA COSTARS Cooperative Purchasing Program, at a cost not to exceed $6,080,832 plus consumables such as thermal paper and printer toner cartridges.

The new voting machines will be used in the 2020 Primary, as mandated by Governor Wolf. Information on the Hart Verity 2.3.4 Voting System can be found here: www.votespa.com/About-Elections/Pages/Hart-InterCivic-Verity-Voting-234.aspx
I think we can assume that the mail ballots were read by this system.

https://www.hartintercivic.com/wp-content/uploads/VerityCentral.pdf

The mail ballots must be removed from envelopes by a separate machine. I don't yet know what brand was used.

I don't know what the role of the "USBs" is.

This is from the Hart website, but doesn't give a description of how the machines actually work.

https://www.hartintercivic.com/perspectives/beyondtechnology/

External Quote:
Election security requires people, processes, procedures and technology.
Voting system technology is an important aspect of security; however, true election security requires thoroughly trained election officials and staff upholding state-defined processes by implementing well-defined election management procedures. Election experts refer to the importance of cultivating secure election management through a combination of "people, processes, procedures and technology."

Even if a voting system uses the very latest security technology, a successful, secure election depends on people, processes and procedures as well.

Jurisdictions' election managers own responsibility for the "people" aspect of election security. These election leaders must ensure staff members and volunteers are carefully selected and properly vetted with reference and background checks. Election personnel require training (including cross-training) in the procedures and technology used to ensure accurate vote capture and tabulation. Team members should be assigned unique usernames, passwords and permissions to access only the appropriate functions within the voting system. Two people should be present for certain types of functions.

Each state establishes the "processes" aspect of election security in the form of election laws, code, rules and advisories. Local jurisdictions within each state must stay informed of these processes and adhere to them.

Responsibility for the "procedures" aspect of election security resides with jurisdictions' election managers. Local procedures document how to apply state election law, rules and advisories based on the jurisdiction's election technology. Procedures include the frequency and steps for testing the voting system's logic and accuracy for every election, chain-of-custody protocols for voting equipment, rules for who can access voting system software when, reconciliation of election results with the voter count for every election, post-election audit steps and more. The voting system vendor should assist with system-related procedures by providing effective training and comprehensive documentation.

The voting system provider holds primary responsibility for the "technology" aspect of election security – for meeting or exceeding standards the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and other bodies maintain. The election solution provider should assist the jurisdiction's election team in optimizing the use of the system's security features, providing in-depth training and documentation.
 
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There are two aspects of this. Firstly the claims themselves, which (if they can be backed up) should be looked into to see if there is any actual fraud.

Secondly, there's the "Argument from authority." Stentroms presents himself as an expert and a digital forensic analysis, he's also a Navy vet, and hence his testimony seems appealing to many people:
Article:
A U.S. Navy veteran and data scientist from Pennsylvania alleged this week that 47 USB cards used during the state's Nov. 3 election have gone missing – and asserted that as many as 120,000 votes cast in the election should be called into question.'

At a hearing in Gettysburg on Wednesday, poll watcher Gregory Stenstrom of Delaware County identified himself a former commanding officer in the Navy and a forensic computer scientist with expertise on security and fraud issues.


His company seems relatively young, with the web site having no archive.org history in its present incarnation
https://marquestar.com/
2020-11-27_09-44-29.jpg


However, it does have a history from 2010 to 2018 as an anti-piracy private security company. Not IT piracy, but actual on-the-water piracy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100515235829/http://marquestar.com/
2020-11-27_09-48-20.jpg


This does not seem to be a simple reuser of the URL, as they also have. a variant of the same logo (a winged compass)

The current company website offers a bewildering array of services with this top-level description:
Article:
Marque Star is a data sciences company that ingests, curates, and visualizes big data using our proprietary JANUS© platform, to provide our clients with visually immersive, actionable business intelligence.
Marque Star JANUS
JANUS© Solutions
Marque Star JANUS© is a unified platform of aggregated software as a service (SaaS) systems, hosted in private and commercial clouds, that includes proprietary software and Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products. Marque Star applies multi-cloud artificial intelligence and machine learning within this architecture to facilitate executive decision-making and predict future events.


Janus has six division, and two additional oddball technologies

  • JANUS© Foundation - some kind of data analysis and visualization suite, and WiFi
  • JANUS© Government - an "IRS Publication 1075 compliance system"
  • JANUS© Education - Looks like a reseller for PowerSchool
  • JANUS© Healthcare - an impressive-sounding list of claims of AI use in healthcare
  • JANUS© Aerospace - Design of aircraft and spacecraft
  • JANUS© Finance - Unlimited corporate financing
  • Oculusdeo© Video - "Visually "Lossless" Video" that has "Visual equivalence with reality"
  • StormTracker.US - a device that displays the NOAA weather radar in 4K, from http://www.technologics.ca/

The "Oculusdeo" video technology has a rather technobabble description:
External Quote:
Marque Star JANUS© incorporates a one of a kind video and data visualization capability that is both visually "lossless" and infinitely scalable that enables our clients to see data, and the future, beyond the limits of the human eye, current technology, and imagination.

Measurable capabilities of JANUS© Oculusdeso© Video© include:

Visually "Lossless" Video
Infinite scalability
Image and Video rendering for 8K
Data visualization rendering to 64K
Proprietary Codec
Proprietary viewing applications
Visual equivalence with reality
"Jumbo Screen" and Digital Signage applications
Enterprise video delivery

None of these things seem particularly unusual to me (a former technical director, very familiar with rendering technology). Any video codec can be made "visually 'lossless'" simply by reducing the degree of compression. If this was an interesting technology then they would be touting the compression performance. It also seems to conflate "video" and "data visualization." There's no inherent limit in the rendering size for data visualization. The big red flag here is that there's no actual examples of what it is supposed to do.

Curiously this technology seems to be a key part in their other offerings, along with setting up wireless networks.

It's presumably licensed from Technologics Development Corp
http://www.technologics.ca/projects.php

2020-11-27_10-34-52.jpg


In short, the company website looks amazing in terms of the range of impressive-sounding services it offers. But it's only been around a year and as far as I can tell, it seems largely to be based on licensed technology. It appears to be re-using the website of a private security company that focused on sea piracy.
 
It should be noted that Gregory Stenstrom was an unofficial poll watcher who volunteered himself on an ad hoc basis.
 
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On Stenstorm's old Twitter account he describes himself as a "Maritime security specialist" - in keeping with the prior incarnation of Marque Star.


2020-11-27_10-58-12.jpg

He has not updated it since 2011, when he was tweeting related to "birther" conspiracy theories.
2020-11-27_11-00-35.jpg


He links to Lexington Technology Consulting, a short-lived network security company, of which he is elsewhere listed as CISO.
https://contactout.com/Gregory-Stenstrom-3680094
External Quote:

Work
Founder @ Marque Star
CTO @ New York Business Consulting Group (NYBCG)
CTO / Co Founder @ LIGER MPV
Consultant @ HLNCC
CISO @ Lexington Technology Consulting
CIO @ International Battery
CEO @ Stenstrom Scientific Inc.
U.S. Naval Officer @ U.S. Navy Reserve
Consultant / Engineer @ Esavio
CIO / Director @ Answerthink Consulting
Consultant @ MSI
Senior Computer Scientist @ Computer Sciences Corporation
Production Manager @ Johnson & Johnson
US Naval Officer @ US Navy
Education
BS, Physical Science @ United States Naval Academy
@ Stoughton High School
Profiles http://www.marquestar.com
About
Entrepreneur, corporate executive, maritime security specialist, consultant. Specialties: Maritime services and security, oil & gas industry, military operations, information technology, surveillance systems, security, encryption, and advanced networks.
I think ultimately you could say his credentials are essentially genuine, but the large amount of ridiculous technical flim-flam on his site casts some doubt on his actual technical understanding.
 
We need to verify what voting system was used to count mail ballots. We need to figure out what he means by "sticking these USBs into the machines."
My understanding is that the tabulators in the precincts have removable USB storage that is collected in the central location to provide a quick tally of the votes cast that day. There should be another USB device locked into the machine that carries a copy of the data, and there should be a paper trail as well. I'm not certain that all of this is actually true for Delaware County, but I'd hope it is.

It appears that it happens that when polling closes at a location, sometimes the workers miss some of these, and they get found when the machines are dismantled and brought in later. Delaware County has 428 voting precincts, so all it takes is for 6% of these precincts to miss one, and you get 25 USBVs that get turned in late like that.

But that's just for the "election night" vote count; these numbers get audited before the vote is certified, and the paper ballots are there to back up the counts.

Curiously this technology seems to be a key part in their other offerings, along with setting up wireless networks.
I'm not sure whether going ad hominem is a good idea. It's clear from his testimony that Mr. Stenstrom does not have any special insight into the voting systems used that day, or in the procedures used to safeguard the electronic counts.
 
Article:
Hart Verity.png

What you want is knowledge on how these paper trails are generated and audited in Delaware County. If they're printing these reports when they close down the poll stations, they have a paper path toward a second tally that parallels the electronic tally; and that's what they'll use to audit the electronic tally. This would foil any USBV shenanigans and make them apparent.
 
Blue Crest Relia-Vote Mail Stream Inserter and Vantage Sorter. The inserter wasn't expected to be ready for use for this election but the sorter was.

External Quote:

So, several other things that came up was on Thursday, it took us three days for them to obey the court order that I secured with Leah's help and the help of the Thomas More Society, who we thank. Incredibly good patriots. They got us in there. They got the order for us to get in and look at the back offices, which were locked, for five minutes every two hours. I went in. I was the first one allowed to go in at 1:30 on Thursday, and then, again at 3:30 for five minutes.
Edit: So why did they get a court order to gain access to this building but not a court order to have those voting machines forensically examined? [Thank you, Mendel]


External Quote:
Gregory Stenstrom: (01:00:42)
The County solicitor had a stopwatch. On the first time, I was not allowed to touch anything. The second time, I did. What I observed in the locked room in the back office was 70,000 unopened mail-in ballots. They were in boxes of 500 stacked in neatly. The gentlemen that came in with me was a Democrat poll watcher, is a forensic pathologist, a very detailed, very dedicated man. And he took meticulous notes as well. And I verified with him, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" We both agreed, as GOP poll watchers and a Democrat poll watcher, that we had a witnessed 60 to 70,000. We had a little bit of a disagreement there. The problem with that was by that time, the mail-in ballots had already been counted.

Gregory Stenstrom: (01:01:37)
So, 120,000 mail-in ballots had already been counted, posted, and done. My question is, where did the 70,000 ballots go? And nobody knows. We have a picture in here of a large number of boxes that I took that were filled with what appeared to be ballots sitting by the BlueCrest machine. They were there for about three hours, and then, they disappeared. I thought it notable when I watched it, the first when taking the ballots up and down. I said, "I am an expert in fraud." I saw the ballots going up multiple elevators and racks. And I think a lot of well-meaning people and a lot of honest people were there doing that. They were trying to participate in the process. And I would say that 99% of the people there, the way the process was designed, I believe that people thought it was a non-fraudulent process.
If these existed at all I'd speculate that since, "They were in boxes of 500 stacked in neatly..." that they were unused and empty mailing envelopes.

External Quote:
We have a picture in here of a large number of boxes that I took that were filled with what appeared to be ballots sitting by the BlueCrest machine.
The Blue Crest machine was probably a...

https://www.bluecrestinc.com/products/sorters/vantage-sorting-solution/

External Quote:
... high-speed sorter [that] features in line metering... etc./ex]

It's a machine for processing outgoing mail. Why would incoming mail be stacked next to it?
 
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I'm not sure whether going ad hominem is a good idea. It's clear from his testimony that Mr. Stenstrom does not have any special insight into the voting systems used that day, or in the procedures used to safeguard the electronic counts.
The problem is that people don't actually listen to and understand his testimony, so they simply hear that it's a Navy vet with expertise in electronic fraud detection saying that there was election fraud, and pretty much stop there.

I think one of the few times that an examination of a person's credentials are justified is when there are claims about how those credentials make the allegations more credible.
 
Article:
Marque Star JANUS© incorporates a one of a kind video and data visualization capability that is both visually "lossless" and infinitely scalable that enables our clients to see data, and the future, beyond the limits of the human eye, current technology, and imagination.

"Oculus Deo" is ungrammatical Latin; "Oculus Dei" is the all-seeing eye of god, iconographically depicted by the eye inside the triangle, happily associated with the Illuminati and Freemasonry. Seems fitting for technology that allows its users to "see the future beyond the limits of imagination"; unfortunately, it probably just means that they can adapt this technology to work with future higher-resolution image formats.

Note that OculusDeo is not claimed to compress the data; it could just be raw, uncompressed video.
There are lossless video codecs that do compression and support unrestricted picture sizes, for example Dirac:
Article:
Dirac is an open and royalty-free video compression format, specification and system developed by BBC Research & Development.[..] Dirac Pro was used internally by the BBC to transmit HDTV pictures at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. [..] Dirac supports lossy and lossless compression modes.

Article:
The frame size and frame rate is, in principle, unrestricted.

So it can't be their codec capabilities that makes them "one of a kind".
 
As an unofficial poll watcher just showing up at this facility on an ad hoc basis, he's having trouble getting in.
I understood that he wanted access to equipment (on Thursday!) that was no longer in use?
And since it is evidence of the election, it's being kept under lock and key, and access is restricted to prevent people from tampering with it.
As it should be.

Do you have a source for Stenstrom being an ad-hoc watcher? We know from Michigan that the election offices tend to have briefings for poll watchers a few days in advance; if Stenstrom didn't get a chance to attend one because he volunteered late, then that'd explain a lot.

We're speculating about the 60-70,000 envelopes; it's fairly clear that they probably weren't for counted ballots, because then there should be ~130,000. (Or they got the box size wrong by a factor of two?) That'll come out in court, though; it's impossible that the election audit missed 60000 votes sitting there in plain sight. These envelopes are examinable.
 
Article:
View attachment 42216

What you want is knowledge on how these paper trails are generated and audited in Delaware County. If they're printing these reports when they close down the poll stations, they have a paper path toward a second tally that parallels the electronic tally; and that's what they'll use to audit the electronic tally. This would foil any USBV shenanigans and make them apparent.
He seems to be implying that someone was using USB flash drives to upload votes into the machines. I'm a rank amateur but it seems to me that would be impossible. Why would the manufacturer give the machine a convenient method for committing fraud?

Wouldn't this be a download only function?
 
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Note that OculusDeo is not claimed to compress the data; it could just be raw, uncompressed video.
I base that interpretation on them saying it is 'Visually "Lossless" Video' - i.e. they describe it as being visually lossless, not pixel-perfect actually digital lossless, and they put "lossless" in quotes to indicate it's not actually lossless in the usual sense. "visually lossless" as a term seems to be used only in the context of compression. See: https://video.stackexchange.com/que...ually-lossless-and-real-lossless-and-what-doe
External Quote:

Technically lossless, or real lossless, means that when the output is decoded by a conformant decoder, the result is mathematically identical to the input.

Visually lossless is a non-rigorous term that indicates subjective transparency i.e. output which to the lay human eye looks indistinguishable from the original.
Rather an obscure point, but I think it demonstrates either a lack of technical understanding or a propensity for technical-sounding exaggeration on the part of whoever wrote it. There is nothing at all special about visually lossless video.
 
I understood that he wanted access to equipment (on Thursday!) that was no longer in use?
And since it is evidence of the election, it's being kept under lock and key, and access is restricted to prevent people from tampering with it.
As it should be.

Do you have a source for Stenstrom being an ad-hoc watcher? We know from Michigan that the election offices tend to have briefings for poll watchers a few days in advance; if Stenstrom didn't get a chance to attend one because he volunteered late, then that'd explain a lot.

We're speculating about the 60-70,000 envelopes; it's fairly clear that they probably weren't for counted ballots, because then there should be ~130,000. (Or they got the box size wrong by a factor of two?) That'll come out in court, though; it's impossible that the election audit missed 60000 votes sitting there in plain sight. These envelopes are examinable.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/presid...rs-to-monitor-polling-places-a-federal-crime/
External Quote:

At the first presidential debate Tuesday evening, President Trump encouraged his supporters to monitor Election Day polling places for instances of fraud.

"I am encouraging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because that's what has to happen — I am urging them to do it," Mr. Trump said during the chaotic inaugural debate held in Cleveland, Ohio. The president continued, "There was a big problem, in Philadelphia they went in to watch, they're called poll watchers, very safe very nice thing — they were thrown out, they weren't allowed to watch," he said, adding, "You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things."

He thanks a Chicago-based non-profit law firm that had been advising such people...
External Quote:
...Leah's help and the help of the Thomas More Society...
He's not volunteering late, he's just showing up at doors demanding entry.

Because he's thanking a law firm, I speculate that he'd then go into a guard-house lawyer routine about how he has the legal right to be an unofficial poll watcher and he must be admitted. Edit: But to be fair and clear, on Thursday he had a court order of some kind.
 
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What you want is knowledge on how these paper trails are generated and audited in Delaware County. If they're printing these reports when they close down the poll stations, they have a paper path toward a second tally that parallels the electronic tally; and that's what they'll use to audit the electronic tally. This would foil any USBV shenanigans and make them apparent.
Yes, it seems like his claims are contradictory. On the one hand, he says that if the ballots are fed back through the counters then the results will be the same (implying some ballots are fraudulent) and on the other hand he's saying votes are being uploaded from USB devices, which would imply the paper ballot count would not match the reported data.
 
I think one of the few times that an examination of a person's credentials are justified is when there are claims about how those credentials make the allegations more credible.
I think his testimony by itself shows his lack of adequate qualification in the security field.

And I said in order to prove that nothing's happening and either exonerate yourselves from the process or refute what I'm saying, please, it's a very simple process, just go get the forensic evidence from the computers. It's a simple process, you turn the computer off, it's nondestructive, takes moments, maybe half an hour, 20 minutes, to do it properly and collect the evidence. You open the computer up, you take a device called a bit blocker, you put it in the hard drive, it's done under the observation of law enforcement officers, you take a forensic image of the drive, put it all back together, it wouldn't have taken more than an hour to image all five machines.

Article:
BitBlocker is a software-based write blocker that inhibits writing to storage devices to avoid tainting the contents of persistent media.

That's from a 2010 paper. Note that it's a software, not a hardware device, so it doesn't fit what Stenstrom describes.
But this terminology is also outdated. For comparison:
Article:
When creating forensic images of media, used hardware or software recording blockers. This is done in order to exclude the possibility of accidental modification of data on them. We will use the hardware lock WiebeTECH Forensic UltraDock V5. This blocker emulates the functions of writing, moving, deleting files on a connected hard drive for proper operation in a Windows environment. In this case, in fact, no data on the source drive is changed.

Article:
So , to prevent this and run the disk safely in a windows environment, we use a special Device called a WRITE BLOCKER. Its Simple motive is to prevent any data alteration on the media under investigation.


Then there's the issue with digital keys. The Hart Verity Signal relies on digital signatures for data safety.
Article:
[page 14]
Verity Workflow
The following image is a visual representation of the Verity Voting System and is intended to help users understand where Central functions within the system.
Verity Workflow.png

[page 18]
Digital Signature
Certified Verity applications digitally sign the data that is stored by Verity (that is, election definition files, vDrives, and so forth). All data transferred from a Verity application is digitally signed with FIPScompliant hash algorithms.
Cast Vote Record (CVR)
To protect voter privacy, CVRs are stored in randomized order so that voting order cannot be determined. CVRs do not contain voter information connecting a vote to a specific voter. The use of digital signatures makes CVRs tamper-evident. CVRs are stored in multiple locations for redundancy.
Verity Key Security
Key is part of the Verity Voting two-factor authentication process. Twofactor authentication requires that each user have something (a programmed Verity Key) and know something (the pass code associated with the Key). Users and the Key must be authenticated. Each Verity Voting application reads the Key before allowing certain operations to occur. Some Verity Voting applications will not operate without a programmed Key. Each Key is valid for one and only one election.
Electronic Data Transfer Functionality
Election professionals are responsible for ensuring that Verity Voting workstations have established any required network connectivity before running Verity Voting applications. Users with proper credentials are able to connect securely. Data is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access and digitally signed to verify the source of the message. This security policy is applied message-by-message in transport.

In this system, there is a central computer with the authority to generate keys and to sign vDrives. If you had a copy of that computer, via a copy of its hard drive, you could use that to sign more vDrives: you could create fake vDrives that looked like were proper and authorized! It would completely destroy the security of these signatures.
Since copying that key authority makes the system inherently unsafe, giving it to a party for analysis would open up the possibility that manufactured evidence could turn up at the computer repair shop of a blind man. Trust in the security of this election requires that the key authority of this system remains secure and un-duplicated.

This means that imaging these hard drives willy-nilly is a very bad idea from a security standpoint; and if Gregory Stenstrom was a security professional who had thought about this even for a second, he would not have suggested it.
 
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He thanks a Chicago-based non-profit law firm that had been advising such people...
External Quote:
...Leah's help and the help of the Thomas More Society...
He's not volunteering late, he's just showing up at doors demanding entry.

Because he's thanking a law firm, I speculate that he'd then go into a guard-house lawyer routine about how he has the legal right to be an unofficial poll watcher and he must be admitted.
Yeah, but that was re: whatever they did on Thursday. He recounts watching the election on Tuesday, so he was on-board then; the question is, how much in advance of Tuesday? Early enough to get the information briefing, if there was one?
 
Yeah, but that was re: whatever they did on Thursday. He recounts watching the election on Tuesday, so he was on-board then; the question is, how much in advance of Tuesday? Early enough to get the information briefing, if there was one?

I should say it's ambiguous whether he was ever an official poll watcher.
 
I should say it's ambiguous whether he was ever an official poll watcher.
He seems to have been an official GOP poll watcher for the City of Chester.
Leah had recruited me for this election, and I was glad. I thank you for that.

Leah Hoops: (53:24)
Thank you.

Gregory Stenstrom: (53:25)
So, for the first part of the day, I was a poll watcher in the city of Chester. And I was with just another former US Marine officer. And the two of us were the only GOP poll watchers in the city of Chester, which is about 40,000 people.
He was apparently not an official poll watcher for the counting center.
But that somewhat spurred me to go down to the counting center, which Leah described. It's on the Seaport Ave. It's a remote building, not much around it. And I wanted to take a look. All day long, I had been told that there were 10 to 20 GOP poll watchers down there, and that everything was well in hand. And out of curiosity, I decided to go down.

Gregory Stenstrom: (55:17)
I arrived at 6 [o'clock] with four other gentlemen, again, foreign military and some good citizens from Delaware County. And we weren't allowed to get in until 11 [o'clock] at night, and we had to get some legal help to get us in.
So he may or may not have been briefed on poll station processes; he wouldn't have been briefed on the procedures in the counting center; but that's what most of his testimony is about.
 
External Quote:
I was a poll watcher in the city of Chester.
It remains to be seen. I speculate that he's just the sort of person who would call himself a poll watcher without the honest adjective, and imply that he was official when he was not.
 
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Gregory Stenstrom was recruited by Leah Hoopes (this is spelled wrong in the transcript). She's a Republican Party Committee member.
Article:
Committee people serve as a point of contact between the voters, elected officials, and their political party. They are considered party officers – not public officials or government employees – and receive no taxpayer-funded compensation. Committee people have a core responsibility to help "get out the vote" and can make the job as big or as small as they want. Many committee people are in touch with their political party and neighbors all year long.

Leah Hoopes is committeewoman for precinct 5 of Bethel Township in Delaware County.
 
His accusation logically implies that these machines are easily hackable, which implies the voting machine designed to commit fraud conspiracy theory.


It's obvious that no officer of the law or any election official could give any unauthorized person the kind of access to these machines that this man was suggesting. On a generic basis your duty would be to suspect intent to sabotage. Crippling these machines would slow the count to a crawl.

External Quote:
What was really upsetting to me, most upsetting, was I had spoke to multiple law enforcement agencies and literally begged multiple law enforcement agencies, I said, "Go in." And I said in order to prove that nothing's happening and either exonerate yourselves from the process or refute what I'm saying, please, it's a very simple process, just go get the forensic evidence from the computers. It's a simple process, you turn the computer off, it's nondestructive, takes moments, maybe half an hour, 20 minutes, to do it properly and collect the evidence. You open the computer up, you take a device called a bit blocker, you put it in the hard drive, it's done under the observation of law enforcement officers, you take a forensic image of the drive, put it all back together, it wouldn't have taken more than an hour to image all five machines. That was never done, despite my objections and that was three weeks ago.
Logic: Whatever you call it, and whether it was a bit of hardware or software... it's clear he came prepared with it. Did he think whateveritwas was just lying around the place? No he was suggesting they use his whateveritwas. If he brought it with him, how does his suspicion start with what he saw? So he came with a suspicion already formed.

Or did he come with a plan to sabotage? It would be the duty of an officer of the law to suspect that.
 
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Logic: Whatever you call it, and whether it was a bit of hardware or software he came prepared with it.
You'd expect a law enforcement unit specialized in computer forensics to do it in their lab; but they'd only do it if there was reasonable suspicion of a crime, which there isn't -- no evidence. So the suggestion of doing hard drive forensics is a great PR move: it suggests that there was a crime, and there's no chance that anyone is going to actually do it, so that's a talking point that will keep.

If there was something to it, they wouldn't speak to "multiple law enforcement agencies", they'd go to court and have a judge order the evidence secured.
 
I don't know why Stenstrom calls the vDrives "USBV cards", they're not called that anywhere else that I can see. Here are some images from a Michigan manual that show how they're used:
Hart Verity 2.png

The vDrives transfer the data from the local precincts to the county level tabulator. During voting, they're plugged into a slot in a closed compartment that can be secured with a tamper-proof seal in addition to the lock.
Hart Verity 3.png

If a precinct with several polling stations mixed up the cases that had their vDrives removed with those who haven't, it'd be hard to spot; and that's how a vDrive might be forgotten at first. For example, this might be the case if a machine was faulty and had to be replaced during the election; the precinct officals would have to remember to collect the vDrive in the machine that they set aside, which would just be a closed case with no indication of whether it still needed to be processed. Hey, all it might take would be to set an unprocessed case down in the wrong place. The vDrive would still be in it, protected by the tamper seal, it just wouldn't be collected with the others.

I doubt anyone knows how frequently this might happen, given that the machines had only been used once before.
Article:
The new voting machines will be used in the 2020 Primary, as mandated by Governor Wolf.

But Stenstrom claims:
"Every election, they leave a couple of USBs in the voting machines, and they're brought back. And generally, the warehouse manager comes over and puts them in." So, in talking to the US Attorney General McSwain and other law enforcement officers, I found out that was not the case, that generally, more than two is unusual.
So the question is, a) how does the 2020 Primary compare to the actual election?
And b), was the "more than two" referring to single polling places (and I'd agree, for a polling place to overlook more than two would be unusual), or county-wide?

But let's assume malfeasance. Delaware County has published precinct-by-precinct vote results. You can't simply have a precinct have more votes without the local officials noticing. This rules out adding the votes after the polls close. To successfully stuff the ballot box, you'd need to get your hands on one of these machines on election day during opening hours. You'd need to create ballots and scan them, and add the ballots to the legitimate ballots somehow. You'd need to find voter names for these ballots that you could strike off the poll books as having voted, or the poll books wouldn't match the number of ballots. And you'd run the risk of striking voters that would be coming in to vote, and they'd complain - but that didn't happen. And there'd be an extra vDrive in the system that wasn't supposed to be in the system; and a paper trail for the machine that had no location to be set up in. And that would happen in twenty precincts, undetected? With no witnesses? How?
How would that have a chance of escaping the audit undetected?

The only way this can happen is "they're all in on it, and nobody's talking". Which is solidly in conspiracy theory territory: complete lack of evidence, and evil everywhere. That doesn't happen, and it doesn't stand up in a court of law.
 
Were the machines Stenstrom was concerned about scanners for mail ballots, or are they the machines used for live voting? I thought they were the mail ballot scanners, but now I'm leaning toward the later.

This is what it looks like if you're a voter.


Source: https://youtu.be/bzyG_ldamu4

But both types are scanners. Ballots are scanned, and votes are uploaded to a flash drive in a closed compartment that can be secured with a tamper-proof seal in addition to the lock. Hart Intercivic, calls this the "Election Data vDrive," or, in the presentation below, the "USB key." [Edit: The Sales Rep is not correct in calling it a key. He should be calling it a vDrive,] The flash drive - vDrive - is removed and taken from the polling place to the counting center and downloaded into the tabulator which keeps track of all votes.

This headline from Breitbart makes it clear that Stenstrom is alleging that the flash drives were being used the opposite way of that intended. To put votes into the scanner or voting machine.

External Quote:
PA Data Scientist Says He 'Personally Observed' USB Cards 'Being Uploaded to Voting Machines' over 24 Times


I think that's impossible. This isn't the kind of USB port you'd have on a PC. It's one way only. And if it were possible, there would be an obvious mismatch between the number of electronically stored votes and the ballots in the bin. he first talks about the modem and then the key. The modem is one way only, btw. It uploads only. Wouldn't the USB port also be upload only for the same reason?

This is a presentation by a sales team. He's going over the scanner that we saw the voter use in the above video.


Source: https://youtu.be/v1JzcfPiy-8?t=1230

Edit: The Sales Rep calls the USB flash drive a "key." This isn't correct. He should call it a vDrive.
External Quote:
... a vote was stored on the unit itself, and then there's a key [vDrive] inside this lockbox here. All the votes are stored onto that key, okay? It's a little USB key; it's 128 bit encrypted... But at the end of the day, you need to get that key back to the elections office, and they're going to read that key tp get their official results. The modem's going to send them unofficial results; the key actually gives them official results for the election.

The only thing that seems unusual is that the process is being carried out more times than usual. I think he's saying you only have to put one flash drive in, let it sit there, and take it out at the end of the night. So why is it being done repeatedly? If that was really happening it would be unusual... but no matter how many times it's done you wouldn't be able to put votes into the machine.

And if you were committing the kind of fraud being alleged, why bother to do it over and over? Why not just once before voting starts?


He can't be talking about a tabulator, because it's in the nature of a tabulator to get downloads from multiple Election Data vDrives.

If there's anything to it, I think what was happening is that the man in question was swapping out the key on a regular basis to ensure against a single key failing. So he's got partial results on a number of keys. That's why he's got a baggy full of keys. Probably a misguided practice, but maybe there is a legitimate reason.
 
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This headline from Breitbart makes it clear that Stenstrom is alleging that the flash drives were being used the opposite way of that intended.
You're assuming that Breitbart or Stenstrom know what they're talking about, and that they will distinguish "voting machine" from "tabulator"; I suspect any PC running election software is a "voting machine" to them, regardless of its function.
He can't be talking about a tabulator, because it's in the nature of a tabulator to get downloads from multiple Election Data vDrives.
Yes. That is why he must be talking about a tabulator.
I personally observed USBV cards being uploaded to voting machines by the voting machine warehouse supervisor on multiple occasions.
Note that he's talking about multiple machines. We don't know what their setup was and what these machines do, and apparently Stenstrom doesn't know, either. But labeling it as an "upload" suggests votes being uploaded from vDrives into one or more tabulators; they may have been using more than one for redundancy in case of failure. Remember that Stenstrom wasn't actually present in the voting center when the first batch of vDrives came in because he didn't get access until 11 o'clock, so he never witnessed the original procedure; but the other GOP observers who were in that warehouse the whole time would have seen it, and they're not complaining.

That's why he's got a baggy full of keys.
He has several "baggies":
And he's walking in with baggies, which we have pictures of,
They could be separate, labeled bags, one for each vDrive, like evidence bags or the ones you put in your fridge.
So they can track which precincts they came from.

Please note that vDrives are not keys!
Article:
4 Verity Build
Verity Build is the application where election definitions, election media (known as vDrives), and twofactor authentication dongles (known as Verity Keys) are created. Users can also proof data, view reports, print ballots, and configure settings for digital scanners and Verity Touch Writer BMD devices.

vDrives are special purpose USB thumbdrives used to deliver election definitions to voting devices. A unique identifier is written to the vDrive by the voting machine upon the first use of the vDrive in that machine for a particular election.

Verity keys are USB dongles which provide two-factor authentication for special functions which require extra security. They are used in voting machines to pre-define polling place information, and in Verity Central and Verity Count to import a signed election export from Verity Build. Keys can be configured with different passwords for administrative access, device access, and applications access.

vDrives and Verity Keys must be purchased from Hart; use of other COTS USB devices for the above purposes has not received EAC certification.

Stenstrom never mentions keys in his testimony.
 
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It doesn't matter what Stenstrom calls them; in that video I embedded, the Hart Intercivic Sales Rep says...

External Quote:
... [this signal indicates that] a vote was stored on the unit itself; and then there's a key inside this lockbox here. All the votes are stored onto that key, okay? It's a little USB key; it's 128 bit encrypted.

But at the end of the day, you need to get that key back to the elections office, and they're going to read that key to get their official results. The modem's going to send them unofficial results; the key actually gives them official results for the election.
Download the data from the flash drive with a tabulator.

Maybe that's at odds with the manual. But that's what he calls them. [Edit: The Sales Rep is wrong. I've edited my previous post to point that out.] I'll call them flash drives to avoid confusion.

That's not the important part. It's very unclear from Stenstrom's narrative where he was when he's observing this process - at a polling place or at the vote-counting center (elections office). If he's at the counting center there would be two different types of machine he might call voting machines: high capacity mail ballot scanners, and tabulators.

If he is talking about tabulators, this is entirely farcical, because the "expert" doesn't recognize what he's looking at, and he's confusing the way they function with the way a scanner functions. If he is observing tabulators... he's looking at an entirely normal process.

If these are tabulators, maybe he was seeing flash drives from mail ballot scanners in another room being hand carried to the tabulators? In this case, everything is going exactly as it should.

Or are they flash drives from voting machines at polling places (if this is after the polls have closed) being read... as per normal.

Could he really not know that he's not looking at a scanner? He didn't notice that no one was putting ballots in to be scanned?
 
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I think I'm coming around to the farcical scenario. Looking at this again.

External Quote:

So, I personally observed USBV cards being uploaded to voting machines by the voting machine warehouse supervisor on multiple occasions. I saw this personally. I brought it to the attention of the deputy sheriff, who was there, stationed, who was a senior law enforcement officer. And I brought it to the attention of the clerk of elections. I brought it to their attention. I objected. And I said, "This person is not being observed. He's not part of the process that I can see." And he's walking in with baggies, which we have pictures of, and it was submitted in our affidavits. And he was sticking these USBs into the machines. So, I personally witnessed, that happened 24 times, over 24 times. We have multiple other witnesses that saw it, including Democrat poll watchers.

Gregory Stenstrom: (58:31)
And I was told the next day by the solicitors… Well, actually, not the solicitor, but the attorney that we had secured, that they said, "Every election, they leave a couple of USBs in the voting machines, and they're brought back. And generally, the warehouse manager comes over and puts them in." So, in talking to the US Attorney General McSwain and other law enforcement officers, I found out that was not the case, that generally, more than two is unusual. So, they denied they did it. But as of today, 47 USBV cards are missing, and they're nowhere to be found. So, I was told personally that these 24 to 30 cards that were uploaded weren't there. Those cards, I demanded that they… They didn't update the vote lifetime. They only updated it about once every two or three hours.

I demanded they updated the vote so I could see what the result was, and it was 50,000 votes.
And I think as a computer scientist, an American, and a Patriot, it doesn't matter who those 50,000 votes were. I'll tell you they were for Vice President Biden.
The bolded part is consistent with tabulators. Son of gun.
 
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There are things that should be clarified:

Mail ballots

Source: https://youtu.be/Uw_9s55dC_A

A polling place is where voters cast their ballots in elections.
A vote-counting center/site - or elections office - is an office where votes are counted. The public is not admitted.

What is a Tabulator?
A device that counts votes.
I can't find a single video or image. It's just a device that downloads the data from the flash drives (vDrives), and/or receives data from a modem.


What is a vDrive? The USB flash drives. From the reference manual:

External Quote:
A Word About Removable Media Devices

Working with external media devices requires a solid connection. When using vDrives, users should ensure that they are properly inserted and firmly seated. While using any Verity application, if users receive an error message stating that there is a problem with the vDrive, they should remove the vDrive, wait a moment, and then reinsert it. If, after a few attempts the vDrive still triggers an error message, users should contact Hart Customer Support Center for a replacement vDrive. Note: Only Hart approved, formatted, and distributed devices should be used.

What is a key? From the reference manual:

External Quote:
Verity Key Security Key is part of the Verity Voting two-factor authentication process. Twofactor authentication requires that each user have something (a programmed Verity Key) and know something (the pass code associated with the Key). Users and the Key must be authenticated. Each Verity Voting application reads the Key before allowing certain operations to occur. Some Verity Voting applications will not operate without a programmed Key. Each Key is valid for one and only one election.
 
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What is a Tabulator?
A device that counts votes.
I can't find a single video or image. It's just a device that downloads the data from the flash drives (vDrives), and/or receives data from a modem.
Have a look at this image from one of my previous posts:
View attachment 42218
Technically, the VerityScan devices are tabulators; they tabulate the vote for a single precinct. Every precinct has one of these.

And these precinct election results are stored on the vDrive (and also printed out via the integrated printer, and stored on an internal card on the VerityScan device that doesn't get removed), and they can then be transferred to a central PC that runs VerityCount; the County would have one or two machines like these and tabulate the county-wide vote with that. These are the only machines in the system that would have votes uploaded to.

Note that this electronic vote still gets audited by comparing it against the paper printouts that the precincts have. It'd be no use just falsifying this electronic count, that'd come out in the next few days when the audit is done.

It's probably possible to set up different workstations to tabulate different races, and have different staff work on these different races in parallel; probably not at 11 o'clock at night, but earlier in the evening that would make sense?
 
Alright. One more read through and I think I finally understand what Stenstrom is alleging.

Remember that vDrives are the flash drives which are removed from the lockbox on the scanners. The polls are closed. The vDrives from ballot scanners at polling places across the county should be arriving at the vote-counting center.

-Stenstrom is in the vote-counting center on election night.
-It is after 11:00 p.m. and the polls are closed.
-He is looking at one or more tabulators.
-He thinks there are too many vDrives being brought to the tabulator by the warehouse manager.
-He believes the warehouse manager is not being adequately watched/observed.
-Therefore the warehouse manager is committing fraud by using vDrives that were never in any ballot scanner. He's doing this without the well meaning people around him noticing it.
-When, at Stenstrom's request, they "update the vote lifetime" on the tabulator, it shows 50,000. [Evidently a count of unique ballots.]
-Therefore the warehouse manager has added 50,000 fraudulent votes since the last time the ballot count was updated.
-Therefore Biden has received 50,000 fraudulent votes.
-He estimates that he saw the warehouse manager use 48 vDrives.
-When he later asks where the vDrives are, he is not given an answer.
-Therefore the 48 vDrives are mysteriously unaccounted for.
-Which is corroborating evidence that election fraud has been committed.

Stenstrom's whole narrative is that security and "chain of custody" were lax. Most people in the vote-center were honest, but innocently incompetent. Various acts of fraud were being committed in plain sight.

The reason it's been so hard to understand his story: It's non-linear, he doesn't define terms, he leaves out important details.

I'll annotate a part of Stenstrom story to clarify...

External Quote:

So, I personally observed USBV cards [vDrives/USB flash drives] being uploaded to voting machines [tabulators in the vote-counting center] by the voting machine warehouse supervisor [the election official whose job it is to do so] on multiple occasions. I saw this personally. I brought it to the attention of the deputy sheriff, who was there, stationed, who was a senior law enforcement officer. And I brought it to the attention of the clerk of elections. I brought it to their attention. I objected. And I said, "This person [the warehouse manager] is not being observed. He's not part of the process that I can see." [This is his opinion, based on... what? I would speculate that the law enforcement officer and clerk of elections are ignoring him because his objections are groundless.]

And he's [the warehouse manager] walking in with baggies [which apparently contain two (?) vDrives each; it's hard to do Stenstrom's math, because his figures change], which we have pictures of, and it was [the photos were] submitted in our affidavits. And he [the warehouse manager] was sticking these USBs [vDrives] into the machines [tabulators]. So, I personally witnessed, that happened 24 times, over 24 times [he thinks that this is an excessive number of vDrives, and concludes that they are all fraudulent]. We have multiple other witnesses that saw it, including Democrat poll watchers.

[Saw what? This seems to be exactly what you would expect. The right person was processing the number of vDrives you would expect.]

And I was told the next day by the solicitors [election officials]… Well, actually, not the solicitor, but the attorney that we had secured, that they [solicitors] said, "Every election, they [poll workers at polling places across the county] leave a couple of USBs [vDrives] in the voting machines [the ballot scanners], and they're [the vDrives] brought back [brought to the vote-counting center after the polls have closed]. And generally, the warehouse manager comes over and puts them [the vDrives] in [into the tabulator at the vote-counting center]."

[Why does Stenstrom think there are an excessive number of vDrives coming in? The polls are closed and vDrives should be arriving from polling places across the county. The number of vDrives coming in would seem to be inline with what would be expected. Stenstrom further compounds his problem by assuming that since some of the vDrives are fraudulent.. all of them are.]

So, in talking to the US Attorney General McSwain and other law enforcement officers, I found out that was not the case, that generally, more than two is unusual [This sentence is difficult to decode, but he seems to be concluding that to account for the number of vDrives he saw the warehouse manager bring to the tabulator(s), the math demands that poll workers must have been using more than two vDrives per ballot scanner from the time polls opened to when the polls closed. Why does Stenstrom conclude that?] So, they [election officials] denied they did it [Denied that the poll workers used more than two vDrives in each ballot scanner on election day]. But as of today, 47 [the number just changed] USBV cards [vDrives] are missing, and they're nowhere to be found. So, I was told personally that these 24 to 30 cards [vDrives; and why has the number just changed again?] that were uploaded weren't there. [Are missing. And why should Stenstrom expect that he would be provided this information?]

[Stenstrom is implying that instead of the poll workers using more than two vDrives per machine, the warehouse manager was downloading vDrives into the tabulator that had never been in any ballot scanner.]

[When does this next incident happen? That night? Or a day or more later?]
Those cards [vDrives], I demanded that they… They didn't update the vote lifetime. They only updated it about once every two or three hours.

I demanded they updated the vote so I could see what the result was, and it was 50,000 votes. And I think as a computer scientist, an American, and a Patriot, it doesn't matter who those 50,000 votes were. I'll tell you they were for Vice President Biden.
When Stenstrom is being cagey he'll say that security was so lax that we don't know what might have happened. Therefore a large number of votes should be disallowed - 50,000 because of this incident and many more because of other incidents. But in this last sentence he says what he means.

Stenstrom's story seems to build paranoid assumption upon assumption.

His story couldn't be defeated. The warehouse supervisor was doing his job. He's been authorized to do it. Does he need to have his steps shadowed directly by another election official or observer? But what if he were? It's suspicious that he's being accompanied by this particular person! They're both in on it. Two people? All three are suspicious. The conspiracy is growing.

His story ignores the safeguards.
-the modem in each scanner reports to a tabulator independently
-the ballots are retained in the scanner ballot bins
-the scanners have a separate internal memory which retains the vote count
-video surveillance of the vote-count center
-whatever else I don't know about
 
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I'll annotate a part of Stenstrom story to clarify...
Your annotation is fine, for the most part.
I wish we could find the photographs of the vDrives in the baggies that Stenstrom took.

Note that the "47" number is uncorroborated and probably from that September theft; Stenstrom talks about 24-30 "VUSB cards" that the warehouse supervisor had.
So, I was told personally that these 24 to 30 cards that were uploaded weren't there.
That statement lacks a lot of context. I think the vDrives haven't disappeared, they're just not stored where Stenstrom looked for them.

It's obvious from the technology that you can match vDrives to PollScan machines, and a ballot box to each of these, and also print a report from the internal memory of the PollScan machines. This is all verifiable. So the data can't get lost, and it can be audited, and that audit is part of the process of certifying the vote.


Regarding the "more than two is unusual", this is the context:
And I was told the next day by the solicitors… Well, actually, not the solicitor, but the attorney that we had secured, that they said, "Every election, they leave a couple of USBs in the voting machines, and they're brought back. And generally, the warehouse manager comes over and puts them in." So, in talking to the US Attorney General McSwain and other law enforcement officers, I found out that was not the case, that generally, more than two is unusual. So, they denied they did it.
1) These machines had only been used once before, in the 2020 Primary, so what's "usual" is up for debate. It's also unclear if the "more than two" refers to a single polling location, or the whole county: I agree that it'd be unusual for a precinct to be more than one or two vDrives short, but that it could well happen in several precincts (and there were over 400 precincts).

2) We don't have enough information about the Delaware County setup (yet). From the Hart Intercivic documentation, common setups are:

Possibility A: The VoteScan machines have the capability to send vote totals to the central office via the integrated modem, so presumably via a cell phone data service. Some machines may be located in places where they don't have good cell phone coverage; for these machines, the vDrives would have to be requested and brought in.

Possibility B: After the polls close, officials gather the vDrives from all polling locations (one location may serve several precincts), and in some locations, not all vDrives are picked up. For example, the accessibility voting machines would have their own drives, and may get overlooked. So the first batches of vDrives are brought in, say 7-9 pm, and when they've been processed, they notice that some vDrives are still missing. So they send out for these drives that are still locked inside some of the machines at the precincts. When they arrive after 11pm, the warehouse supervisor adds them to the total count.

It's important to note that these vDrives are digitally signed by the VoteScan machines they were used in; you can't add votes to it from elsewhere. The VoteScan machines also print out a paper tally that is later used to audit the electronic vote count, and obviously you could always recount the ballots that went through that particular machine. The ballot count must also match the number of voters whom the poll registered on election day.

Uploading extra vDrives to a tabulator would affect the preliminary vote count, but it could not invalidate the certified count.
 
The Sales Rep in the video says that the modem first reports an unofficial vote tally to a tabulator and the vDrive later reports the official vote tally. But use of the modems is optional, while use of the vDrives is mandatory.




What we're presented with by Stenstrom is..

-Argument by authority.
-Standard practices framed as negligent practices. E.g. separation of signature envelopes from mail ballots.
-Innuendo as fact.
-Illogical assumptions as fact.
-If it's possible it happened, we have to act as if it did happen.
-I'm not saying it's fraud... but it's fraud.
-A Conspiracy theory which cannot be falsified. He starts the Conspiracy small but all the safeguards we've mentioned could be defeated by expanding the size of the Conspiracy as needed.

Has he pursued a legal remedy to this? One in which he would testify under oath, be subject to cross examination and be confronted with expert testimony?
 
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Interesting note: One, Gregory Stenstrom of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania was listed as a plaintiff in the 2018 class action suit against Apple for the battery/slow down issue.
 
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