Gpscruise

Look Ahead America, the non-partisan, non-profit organization that came to life following the uncertainty of the 2020 General Election, continues its mission to get answers to questions surrounding election integrity in the United States. On Apr. 19, Executive Director Matt Braynard announced the release of The Georgia Report, which he says “proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the deserved winner of the state of Georgia’s presidential electoral votes in the 2020 General Election is unknowable.”

Motivated by President Trump’s first inaugural address, where he declares, “Through loyalty to our country, we will rediscover loyalty to each other,” Braynard, who has been repeatedly harassed by Dominion Voting Systems, and his team of over forty individuals initiated the Voter Integrity Project (VIP). The team has dedicated hundreds of hours of work and nearly $100,000 in crowd-sourced funding to run the experimental analyses that make up the report, which identifies six tranches of illegal ballots in the state of Georgia. 

There were about five million ballots cast. No reasonable person can deny, given the state’s poor maintenance of their voter rolls, that it’s not only possible but likely that twelve thousand ballots were cast by individuals who did not have legitimate residency in the state.

— Matt Braynard (@MattBraynard) April 29, 2021

As reported by UncoverDC, Georgia like several other key battleground states, exhibited many instances of election fraud. Voter registration is one such instance. Like most states, it is illegal in Georgia for voters to register using a residential address where they do not live. However, using extensive methods described in the report, the VIP identified 1,056 individuals in Tranche 1 that registered illegally to vote. 

Tranche 2 explored the National Change of Address (NCOA) database maintained by the United States Postal Service (USPS). The USPS is responsible for matching the EABCINV database against the NCOA. Braynard and his team identified 15,700 individuals who, more than a month before the 2020 General Election, filed permanent, out-of-state residency changes. Again, using comprehensive procedures detailed in the report, the VIP concluded with 95 percent certainty that 6.5 percent of these votes were cast illegally. When projected to the 15,700 individuals identified above, the report calculates 10,651 illegally cast ballots in this category. 

In Tranche 3, the VIP examined EABCINV to out-of-state subsequent registrations (OOSSR). After comprehensive matching against numerous databases, they identified 4,926 ballots in this category. With 95 percent confidence, they concluded that 17.4 percent, or 840 ballots, were cast illegally with a margin of error of 5.7 percent. 

Limitations of time, the inability to access the necessary government databases, and budget constraints made it impossible for the VIP to analyze Tranche 4, 5, and 6. Nevertheless, the report explains:

Given our findings in these samples, there appears beyond a reasonable doubt that one will find many more illegally cast ballots in the tranches that we could not examine due to limits of manpower, time, budget, and access. In nearly all cases, the state government, if it chose to, could research these tranches that we could not as it has a full arsenal of tools at its disposal (full dates of birth, voter registration records, etc.).

I got a request for the unredacted GA report from @Politifact.

A link to this was my response.

cc: @PolitiFactBias https://t.co/x3lku0cGTN

— Matt Braynard (@MattBraynard) April 28, 2021

Under the pretense of the pandemic, the unprecedented changes to voting practices across the nation wreaked havoc on the November election. After examining multiple faults in the election, Look Ahead America has listed in their report critical policy objectives that it believes will restore the public’s trust and confidence in future elections and restore faith in our electoral system. Each objective holds the following key requirements: (1) eliminates vulnerabilities in our election system, (2) is in harmony with current state and federal laws and established legal precedence, (3) practicality of implementation. The following is a summary of recommendations provided by Look Ahead America and can be found in detail in their report:

• A single machine-readable thumbprint on the affidavit envelope of an absentee ballot will limit the ability of an individual other than the voter of record to cast that ballot and allow for easy detection of multiple ballots cast by one voter.
• Mandated and Public Voter List Hygiene to ensure the list of registered voters contains only those legally eligible to cast ballots. The findings will appear in the publicly available voter lists, allowing citizen organizations to ensure only legally cast ballots are counted.
• Ban on the Use of “Black Box” Voting Equipment. Only election equipment that uses open-source software and design available for inspection and review by the public and technology organizations will be allowed.
• Appointment of a Citizens Elections Supervisory Committee. Members will have access to the election process and will be responsible for documenting the lawful execution of the election at every level.
• Creation and Sufficient Funding for a Dedicated Voter Fraud Investigation Division within the State’s Attorney General’s Office
• Equitable Distribution of Private Contributions to Election Operations. While private individuals and corporations may choose to sponsor improvements to election operations with direct donations of funding or material to government election agencies, these contributions may not target geographically (e.g. by district or precinct) and must be distributed equally throughout a state based on voter populations.

Look Ahead America is not stopping with Georgia. They plan to release similar reports for Wisconsin and Arizona in the coming month. And this summer, the group will focus on states that have elections this year—Louisiana, New Jersey, and Virginia—to identify ineligible individuals in the voter databases.

To support Look Ahead America, please go to https://www.lookaheadamerica.org/donate.

The post Election Integrity: Look Ahead America’s ‘The Georgia Report’ appeared first on UncoverDC.

Just 3 short months ago, the GOP establishment wing in Washington D.C. and around the country were popping the champagne corks and clapping each other on the back. Sure, they’d just lost the White House and the Senate while the House narrowly remained under Democrat control, but on the bright side, DONALD J. TRUMP WAS GONE NOW.

At LAST, the RINOs could begin their long-anticipated strategies for Life-After-Trump.

AND THEN, ALL OF A SUDDEN…

It was shortly after his dynamic CPAC speech on February 28 that Trump released the above public statement on March 9. In that statement Trump explicitly called for supporters to send their donations directly to his Save America PAC rather than to the GOP.

If you listened to Trump’s full CPAC speech; he clearly laid out his plans for the next several years. For the presidency, for the House and the Senate, and certainly as far as the GOP is concerned. And how the GOP was still using his image to raise funds and, in his estimation, wasting much of the money. For that reason, the March 9 statement should have come as no surprise to anyone paying attention.

But instead of really listening to what Trump said at CPAC, the GOP establishment types responded the same way CNN did: either by derisively mocking the speech or calling it a threat to democracy. Plenty of establishment media covered the speech as the loud, angry whining of a sore loser. And then, when the first quarter’s fundraising results were announced, all Hell broke loose. The RINOs rubbed their eyes in shock as they looked at the numbers. It turns out that not only did the Conservative base hear Trump’s March 9 call for them to bypass the GOP and to send their money straight to him, but they also sent him enough to dominate the fundraising quarter by a wide margin.

By how much did Trump dominate the year’s first fundraising quarter now that he’s an outsider again? Trump’s Save America PAC raised a cool $23,000,000 more than the RNC and the DNC combined

2021 First Quarter Fundraising.

Pres. Donald Trump's Save America PAC: $85 Million

RNC: $44 Million

DNC: $18 Million

Donald Trump raised $23 Million more than the RNC & DNC combined.

— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) April 20, 2021

And Trump didn’t put out that March 9 statement until the quarter was half over. Imagine the numbers Trump is going to pull in during the next quarter, at this rate. Understand what this means: Trump has diverted a tremendous amount of the stream of money coming from the base to the GOP.  That money is now going to Trump himself. Which, of course, gives Trump an immense amount of clout.

Democrat Fundraising Appears to Be Tanking

And let’s talk about the anemic Democrat fundraising numbers for just a minute.

Buyer’s remorse setting in after Biden took office on January 20 appeared to be a real thing, at least on social media, where myriads of posts could be found as disillusioned Biden voters vented their disappointment with Biden’s handling of numerous issues.

But now, the first quarter’s fundraising demonstrates just how badly the Democratic base is doing when it comes to supporting their own party now that Biden is safely in office. According to verified sources, the DNC raised only $18 million in January and February. [At the time this column went to press, several hours of searching failed to turn up the DNC’s March fundraising numbers, and so the full DNC total for the first quarter could not be determined].

Trump Was Never Going Third Party

Despite all the talk about starting up a third party by other people after the election was blatantly stolen from him last year, and the GOP establishment refused to put up much of a fight against that theft, Trump made it crystal clear in his speech at CPAC how he intends to proceed. And he’s not going third party. He made it clear what his intentions are. His intention is to take over the GOP from the ground up.

Now, some people will object that Trump already started doing that back in 2015. It’s true he started that process as a candidate. But all during his presidency, it was obvious there was an entrenched wing of the party at the very top that was resisting everything he was trying to do from the White House.  So, it’s clear he hadn’t finished taking over the GOP by the time the 2020 election arrived.

There is only one way Trump removes that entrenched opposition at the very top of the GOP. And that is by cutting off their donor money and starving them out. Assuming any of them listened to Trump’s speech in Orlando, I’m sure many of the GOP establishment class dismissed his statements about taking over their fundraising as the babblings of a lunatic. That would be no surprise, as the D.C. establishment from the beginning has consistently and constantly underestimated both Trump and his base. If they thought Trump was blowing smoke at CPAC and with his March 9 public statement, the release of these fundraising numbers should have provided them with a huge dose of clarity.

They now realize Trump is completely serious about cutting off their money, and not only can he do it, but he’s off to a fantastic start. If Trump could divert that much of the GOP’s cash to his own pockets in half of a quarter, what will the next quarter’s numbers look like? He very well could go over $100 million while the GOP’s total drops from the $44 million it managed in the past quarter as wealthier donors see where the base is going and follow suit.

The Usual Post-Election Fatigue Is Not Affecting Trump but It’s Dragging Down the Mainstream Media

Longtime political observers are aware that fundraising numbers always drop right after a big national election. This is especially true following a presidential election, where the news coverage and fundraising cycles will have lasted more than a year.  It’s an annual phenomenon that after a presidential election, not only do fundraising numbers plummet, but the ratings for the various news channels decline as well as many viewers lose interest in the political scene now that the election is past. The holiday season begins in earnest, with Thanksgiving and Christmas arriving, followed by New Years.

But the 2020 election theft created a post-election atmosphere like nothing the country has ever seen before. While the DNC/RNC funding numbers showed the usual election fatigue drop, Trump’s fundraising numbers exploded at the same time the mainstream news media entered a “Trump Slump”.

Far from Abandoning Him, Trump’s Base Is Now on The March Getting Ready for 2022 And 2024

The political elite class in both parties has spent more than five years now desperately trying one narrative after another as they attempted to drive Trump’s base away from him. Nothing they tried has worked. And that elite class may very well have made a fatal mistake in ‘fortifying’ the 2020 election, openly changing election laws and then using an unconstitutional ‘election month’ to hand the victory to an increasingly frail and confused Joe Biden.

The last, most histrionic narrative adopted by the establishment was the ‘insurrection’ narrative that has been relentlessly pushed since January 6. That absurd narrative has also failed to move Trump’s base away from him. Far from abandoning him, the Trump base proved they are still loyal, and they are still listening to him, as his extraordinary fundraising demonstrates. But the Trump base’s activity is not just limited to sending Trump their money. They are also sending themselves.

An Army of Trump Supporters Is on The March at the State Level

If before much of Trump’s base was in passive observer mode, thinking they were watching Trump save the country, they’re being forced to watch the fraudulent shenanigans of the last election have compelled them to get off their couches and get personally involved in saving this country themselves.  And if they have to join Trump in taking over the GOP from the ground up to accomplish that, then so be it.

Longtime political activist and Editor-in-Chief of UncoverDC, Tracy Beanz Diaz has just been elected to political office in South Carolina’s Horry County. Tracy represents hundreds of ardent Trump supporters who, far from retreating or abandoning Trump or the issues he champions, are instead stepping into the arena and taking on this fight themselves. The blatant theft of the election from Trump may very well have saved this country in the end.

The post An Outsider Again, Trump Begins Taking Over the GOP’s Fundraising appeared first on UncoverDC.

On Friday, April 23, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released documents under orders from a federal judge relating to the investigation into the murder of Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich. On July 10, 2016, Rich was murdered with a gun near his Washington D.C. home. The official explanation for Rich’s murder was robbery, but his wallet, phone, and watch were not taken.

Attorney Ty Clevenger had filed a lawsuit against the FBI on behalf of Texas resident Brian Huddleston for documents related to the investigation whose FOIA request had been denied. Clevenger has released 68 of these pages on his website, some of which are new to the public domain, and the pages have also been uploaded to Scribd.

These documents include an unclassified November 11, 2017, FBI Boston memo, which summarizes the opening of a case prompted by a “Dark Web Threat” tip received by NYPD. FBI connected Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) received the intel that a website “listed _________ as a target.”  The memo concludes: “Given _________, it is conceivable that an individual or group would want to pay for his death.” This memo does not name Seth Rich; all names are redacted. But that has not stopped conjecture that there is a link between Rich’s death and the June 22 death of a former UN official who was said to have accidentally crushed his own throat prior to scheduled testimony against Hilary Clinton and the Democrat Party, and yet another untimely death of a process server in the class action lawsuit by Bernie Sanders supporters that alleged election fraud against Wasserman Schulz and the Democratic Party.

Within the released documents, there are three pages of an interview with an unnamed Assistant U.S. Attorney about Seth Rich’s background and the events surrounding his death. Another interview in the release references Rich’s murder and is dated September 2016. It has an interviewee with a name redacted who calls herself a colleague of Rich. The FBI summarizer states that the interviewee suspected “hackers would release…[20,000 stolen emails] around the time of the DNC.” Context is redacted, but that interview summary separately mentions Paul Manafort and Donald Trump.

For context, on March 16, 2016, Wikileaks had dumped the Hillary Clinton server email archive, and twelve days after Rich’s death, began a leak release that included 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments in total to and from heads of the DNC. The emails were unfavorable to chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schulz, who would eventually be ousted, as well as Hillary Clinton, who had just been named the nominee.

The documents also include an FBI interview with former Trump aide Richard Gates from 2018, who took a guilty charge on one count of false statements and one count of conspiracy against the United States in a plea deal the year before. The interview summary also mentions Seth Rich and the DNC leaks, as well as interest among opposition researchers in the Trump campaign.

One page references a then open FBI case that investigated Guccifer2, the moniker of the anonymous persona that, according to the FBI here, “implies he hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers.” Four pages are dedicated to investigators’ interview of Dana Rohrbacher in relation to a Michael Isikoff article for Yahoo that claims Assange was offered a pardon in exchange for proof that Russia was not the DNC hacker.

Julian Assange has not made an explicit public admission of the leaker’s identity to protect his source. Multiple outlets have retracted articles that claimed Seth Rich was the leaker, including Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff, as UncoverDC previously reported.

The DNC employed cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike to find out how their servers had been compromised and by whom. It was concluded that the culprit was likely to be Russian or even connected to Russian intelligence—but the connection was never certain, and the reasoning seemed contradictory. Crowdstrike’s analysis effusively praised those responsible, saying the ‘tradecraft is superb’ and ‘operational security is second to none.’ But Cyrillic comments were left behind along with the name of a Soviet spy chief, and IP addresses were re-used.

Tracy Beanz, Editor-In-Chief of UncoverDC, reported in May 2020, “To reaffirm—Crowdstrike, the company hired to take a look at what happened at the DNC, has stated under oath in front of the HPSCI, that they do not have any evidence that the data supposedly gathered during this “attack” was exfiltrated.” 

Bill Binney and members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) claim that it wasn’t a remote hack at all but theft by an insider located on-site. Their report claims forensic evidence shows that the data was downloaded at speeds consistent with a local thumb drive rather than through the internet. It further examines metadata from Guccifer to reach the same conclusion as UncoverDC reported and others have done for years.

The 2019 Binney/FIPS report has been cited in criticisms of the Trump administration’s apparent lack of action:

“…the President or someone close to him asked Mike Pompeo, at that time the head of the CIA, to meet with Binney. Binney demonstrated to Pompeo that the President was being systematically lied to by the intelligence agencies about the Russian cyberwar, election-meddling fable, which has now been used to cripple the Trump Presidency for over two years. Binney offered to assist in an investigation to unearth the truth as to the perpetrators of the lie, but he never heard a word back thereafter.”

The first page of this latest FBI declass includes an email that was sent to Peter Sztrok, Jonathan Moffa (FBI), and other redacted recipients from a redacted sender and then forwarded from Sztrok to Lisa Page. Its last response reads “FYSA. I squashed this with [redacted]” (‘FYSA’ may mean ‘for your situational awareness,’) after a chain of discussion about a now-famous Assange interview where the FBI email says Assange suggested that “Seth Rich was a Wikileaks source” and “may have been killed because he leaked the DNC e-mails to his organization.”

Summaries of interviews with Paul Manafort are also included in the released FBI documents with references to Roger Stone’s relationship to the Trump campaign and whether he had advanced knowledge of WikiLeaks release of the John Podesta emails. Four more pages related to the DNC and Hillary for America “provid[ing] the FBI with digital evidence in furtherance of [the Mueller] investigation,” hand-delivered through legal firm Perkins Coie May of 2018. Another interview summary with Jason Fishbein is included, who told the Palm Beach Post that he gave 500 pages of material to Mueller investigators, “mainly printouts of his exchanges with WikiLeaks representatives.”

Four pages of a fourteen-page investigative interview of Jerome Corsi dated January 4, 2019, are also included in the 68 pages, referencing “previous interviews” with the FBI and saying he “had a hard time determining whether or not he was actually remembering things or if he was inventing them.” The interview summary contains information and opinion that Corsi is said to have given about topics including WikiLeaks, Roger Stone, Guccifer, DCLeaks, Seth Rich, Fusion GPS, John Brennan, and whether he had advanced knowledge of the Podesta emails leak. Finally, the document includes a consent document that Jerome Corsi gave to the FBI to search some unidentified computers.

With Friday’s release, Clevenger now has some, but not all, of the documents he is seeking. He says that there are thousands of pages and a laptop that are not public, including 576 pages identified by the FBI as relevant.

Clevenger sought Seth Rich documents from the FBI prior to this latest release, which resulted in a legal volley that included various delays and denials, including one response from the FBI that the office had “conducted a reasonable search and found no responsive records.” But when that separate 2020 FOIA request from Judicial Watch for emails between Peter Sztrok and Lisa Page returned the one with the subject “Seth Rich,” Clevenger said that “new evidence proves otherwise.”

Clevenger had previously called the “Seth Rich” email between Strzok and Page, which had already been in the public domain, “unequivocal proof that the FBI is hiding records about Seth Rich.” Per Craig Murray of Consortium News, the FBI claimed no records and then found them, so “what other falsely denied documents does the FBI hold about Rich[?].”

Clevenger had requested a criminal investigation in a letter to U.S. Attorney John Durham, U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue, and Inspector General Michael Horowitz. In it, he said it appeared to have been a “fraud on the court” and implied it was an intentional coverup:

“Mr. Hardy’s staff purportedly searched for ‘Seth Conrad Rich’ but failed to search for ‘Seth Rich,’ another tactic designed to exclude responsive records.” Clevenger concluded, “It appears that FBI personnel are deliberately hiding records about Seth Rich and deliberately deceiving the court about the reasonableness of their searches for those records. Worse, this sort of bad-faith non-compliance appears to be the norm.”

Attorney Clevenger says, “virtually no one in official Washington has lifted a finger to help.” He added he has a source that tells him the NSA is hiding records about communications between Assange and Rich and that he attempted to get them declassified:

“… I sent a letter to Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell … and I copied the letter to Republican Senators Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, and Ron Johnson, as well as Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Grenell left office shortly thereafter, so I sent it with a cover letter to the current Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, on June 2, 2020. To date, no one has responded to the letter. Absolutely no one. And for reasons that I do not yet fully understand, none of the Republicans in Congress (or even in the Trump Administration) are willing to go anywhere near the subject of Seth Rich.”

Brad Bauman, who became the spokesperson for the Seth Rich family, has been called a “professional Democrat crisis PR consultant” by a WikiLeaks tweet, and Jessica McBride, a reporter for Heavy, said that Bauman is “entrenched in progressive circles.”

Seth Rich's new "family spokesman" is Brad Bauman a professional Democrat crisis PR consultant with the Pastorum Group.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 11, 2016

It was also reported that he has ties to the Bauman Foundation and David Brock, founder of Media Matters, and references a report by William Craddick of Disobedient Media, now deleted, that claimed Brock and his affiliations include foreign special interests, organized crime, Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and the Chinese government, along with looser ties to political actors involved in “voting fraud and violent disruption of political events.”

According to InfluenceWatch, The Bauman Foundation has an endowment that has given money to groups that include UnidosUS (previously the National Council of La Raza) and CIA head John Brennan’s Center for Justice.

According to a Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson who corresponded via email with The Epoch Times on Sunday, “The [Seth Rich] case is still active and being investigated.“

The post Documents Released Pertaining to FBI Investigation into Seth Rich Murder appeared first on UncoverDC.

"Race is not a political weapon to settle every issue the way one side wants. It's too important."

I’ve been playing Oskar Stålberg’s Townscaper recently and enjoying seeing how the algorithms react to changes. While looking for information on how garden paths are calculated, I stumbled across Chris Love’s article on the Townscaper file format. Using that as a starting point, I decided to try building up town maps in processing using Perlin noise to determine height, color, and distance above waterline.

My first attempt iterated the map while incrementing a 1D vector in Perlin noise space to determine these attributes. This gave a nice wavy pattern; but, wasn’t quite what I was trying for.

The next attempt involved mapping the coordinates of the map to a 2D point in Perlin noise space; but, I didn’t scale things, so there’s a fairly low level of variation.

Increasing the variation in building height and distance between the base of each building node and the waterline yielded a fairly nice result.

I think my favorite towns involve a middle of the road approach which yields town maps that have some variation in height; but, not too much.

I’m sharing the code I used – hopefully continuing in the footsteps of Chris and Patrick (whose shoulders I stand on for map generation) with the idea that someone may take this and run somewhere new with it. If you do, I’m curious to see where you go! Even if you don’t, I strongly recommend checking out Townscaper – what Oskar Stålberg has created is absolutely wonderful.

// --------------------------------------------------------------------
// Load a save file from Townscaper as a template, replace the voxel
// data, then save the file out with a timestamp.
// --------------------------------------------------------------------

import java.lang.Float;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

// Offsets in noise space for attributes.
final static float BUILDING_HEIGHT_NOISE_OFFSET = 0.0;
final static float BUILDING_COLOR_NOISE_OFFSET = 25.0;
final static float STRUT_HEIGHT_NOISE_OFFSET = 50.0;

// Noise distribution (larger values -> more variation).
final static float BUILDING_HEIGHT_NOISE_RANGE = 20.0;
final static float BUILDING_COLOR_NOISE_RANGE = 1.0;
final static float STRUT_HEIGHT_NOISE_RANGE = 20.0;

// Value ranges.
final static float MAX_BUILDING_HEIGHT = 4.0;
final static float MAX_BUILDING_COLOR = 15;
final static float MAX_STRUT_HEIGHT = 10.0;


XML xml;
XML[] corners;
XML voxelHolder;
float minX, maxX, minY, maxY;
float xRange, yRange;
  
void loadTownFile() {
  // The code expects a file called "Town0.scape" to be located in the project's "data" folder.
  xml = loadXML("Town0.scape");
  
  // Load the corner array.
  XML cornerHolder = xml.getChild("corners");
  corners = cornerHolder.getChildren("C");

  // Traverse the corner array to find the range for X and Y coordinates.
  minX = minY = Float.MAX_VALUE;
  maxX = maxY = Float.MIN_VALUE;
  
  for (int i=0; i<corners.length; i++) {
    float x = corners[i].getChild("x").getFloatContent();
    float y = corners[i].getChild("y").getFloatContent();
    
    minX = min(minX, x);
    maxX = max(maxX, x);
    
    minY = min(minY, y);
    maxY = max(maxY, y);
  }
  
  println("X Range: " + minX + " - " + maxX);
  println("Y Range: " + minY + " - " + maxY);

  xRange = (maxX - minX);
  yRange = (maxY - minY);

  // Load the voxel array.
  voxelHolder = xml.getChild("voxels");
  XML[] voxels = voxelHolder.getChildren("V");

  // Remove all existing voxels.
  for (int i=0; i<voxels.length; i++) {
    voxelHolder.removeChild(voxels[i]);
  }
}

void generateTownMap() {
  for (int c=0; c<corners.length; c++) {
    // Get the X and Y of the corner, normalized so 0 is the minimum.
    float normalizedX = minX + corners[c].getChild("x").getFloatContent();
    float normalizedY = minY + corners[c].getChild("y").getFloatContent();
    
    // Calculate the building height.
    int buildingHeight = 1 + (int)(noise(BUILDING_HEIGHT_NOISE_OFFSET + normalizedX / xRange * BUILDING_HEIGHT_NOISE_RANGE, BUILDING_HEIGHT_NOISE_OFFSET + normalizedY / yRange * BUILDING_HEIGHT_NOISE_RANGE) * MAX_BUILDING_HEIGHT);
    corners[c].getChild("count").setContent(str(buildingHeight));
    
    // Calculate strut height
    int strutHeight = (int)(noise(STRUT_HEIGHT_NOISE_OFFSET + normalizedX / xRange * STRUT_HEIGHT_NOISE_RANGE, STRUT_HEIGHT_NOISE_OFFSET + normalizedY / yRange * STRUT_HEIGHT_NOISE_RANGE) * MAX_STRUT_HEIGHT);
        
    for (int v=0; v<buildingHeight; v++) {
      // Calculate color
      int voxColor = (int)(noise(BUILDING_COLOR_NOISE_OFFSET + normalizedX / xRange * BUILDING_COLOR_NOISE_RANGE, BUILDING_COLOR_NOISE_OFFSET + normalizedY / yRange * BUILDING_COLOR_NOISE_RANGE) * MAX_BUILDING_COLOR);

      // Add the voxel to the array and set the color and height attributes.
      XML genVoxel = voxelHolder.addChild("V");
      XML colorEl = genVoxel.addChild("t");
      colorEl.setContent(str(voxColor));
      XML heightEl = genVoxel.addChild("h");
      heightEl.setContent(str(strutHeight + v));
    }
  }
}

void saveTownFile() {
  // Build a timestamped filename.
  final SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd_HH-mm-ss");
  final String timeStamp = format.format(new Date());
  final String generatedXmlFileName = "Town" + timeStamp + ".scape";
  
  // Save the XML out.
  saveXML(xml, generatedXmlFileName);
}

void setup() {
  loadTownFile();
  generateTownMap();
  saveTownFile();
}

Based on a plethora of post-election studies, analyses, and news reports (the latter primarily from independent media), there is an overwhelming presumption among Americans (77% of Republicans and even 20-30% of Democrats) that the 2020 elections were tainted by election fraud. See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for some of those studies and reports. But what is to be done? At least twenty-eight states are considering changes to election laws, according to CNN. Several states with Republican-dominated legislatures have passed new election laws, including Georgia and Texas. Those measures are not as comprehensive as they should be, having been rushed through largely in response to public pressure. Indeed, Georgia’s new law, in particular, leaves much to be desired despite the Democrat “sound and fury” after it was passed. We can do MUCH better!

An independent team led by physicist and Mensa John Droz, Jr. has compiled a comprehensive set of recommendations for improving election integrity in all states. The report has just been posted here. The purpose of this article is to briefly summarize the report and its findings. [Note: your correspondent was honored to have been one of the several contributors to the report.]

This excerpt from the Executive Summary identifies the report’s purpose:

“[Based on continuing news reports about the 2020 elections,] some obvious questions conscientious citizens would have are: 1) what transpired in 2020? 2) how did we allow this situation to get so bad? and 3) what should be done about it now? The answer to question #1 is still unfolding, but we’ll give readers a solid understanding. We will briefly answer question #2. Most of the focus of this Report is about going forward: our recommendations for addressing U.S. election integrity — and we promise a comprehensive answer, with some fresh, new, creative ideas.”

Here is why election integrity matters:

“Our perspective is that if American citizens become untethered from their government representatives, then the entire basis of our democratic society (a republic) is undermined. If we allow our foundation to be eroded, there is little else that matters — as we are then relegated to erecting an edifice on a footing of sand. No matter how impressive that structure appears to be, it will not stand the test of time.”

The report was informed by a large number of sources that were linked in the extensive appendices: over thirty pre-2020 election integrity reports (Appendix A), eight previous studies completed by Droz’s team plus fifteen other reports/studies (Appendix B), thirty organizations across the U.S. that are involved in election integrity (Appendix C), and thirteen separate critiques of HR1/SR1 (Appendix E). From these sources, the Droz team constructed the report as follows:

Part 1. What Happened in the 2020 Elections?

Part 2. Why Has Election Integrity Deteriorated This Much?

Part 3. Recommendations — Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Part 4. Post-Election Audits

Part 5. Going Forward — HR-2/S-2, etcetera

Part 6. Conclusions

The key parts are, of course, the recommendations and conclusions. Here is a summary of the report’s recommendations that were extracted and posted separately for ease of understanding:

1. 1. Election laws and regulations may not be changed within 180 days prior to that election.
   2. Primary elections must be closed.
   3. All votes, regardless of voting method, shall be held to equal standards.
   4. Every state would set up three-week advance voting at convenient locations in every precinct.
   5. Absentee voting would be allowed only in specialized circumstances.
   6. Drop Boxes would be prohibited.
   7. It would be illegal to do ballot harvesting.
   8. It would be illegal for any state, county, or precinct to accept third-party election-related funds.
   9. Election Day would be a national holiday.
   10. All absentee ballots must be received by Election Day.
   11. Provide voter assistance where needed.
   12. Some type of legal ID would be required when voting.
   13. It would be illegal to have any voting machine (or connected server) accessible from the Internet.
   14. Election day voting would end at 5 PM.
   15. All absentee and early-voting ballots would be tabulated and reported first.
   16. Election observers are allowed complete access to the election process.
   17. Fixing deficient ballots (or mail-in envelopes) is not allowed.
   18. All Counties would be required to report their election results in a standardized format (e.g., Excel).
   19. Sample forensic audits should be automatic.
   20. Chain of custody must be maintained for all ballots for at least 22 months.
   21. Negative vote tabulations (e.g., Edison) are prohibited without detailed transparent supporting data.
   22. All eligible U.S. citizens will be automatically registered to vote.
   23. Every state is required to update its election rolls annually.
   24. Rules prohibiting non-citizens from voting are tightened.
   25. A national 800 number and website is set up for citizens to report possible improper election actions.
   26. Uniform requirements for state vote certification.
   27. State legislatures have legal standing to file election-related lawsuits.
   28. Citizens have legal standing to file election-related lawsuits.
   29. State recall rules must be consistent with state election rules.
   30. An equally-weighted bi-partisan Federal commission is created in 2021 to research and issue a public report on the voting rules and regulations of European Countries, Canada, Mexico, and Australia.

The report itself provides greater details on each of the above recommendations. The appendices also contain fourteen sample Red state election regulations (Appendix F), eight sample Blue state absentee ballot regulations (Appendix G), fourteen recommended boilerplate election regulations (Appendix H), a miscellaneous collection of twelve post-2020 election integrity ideas going forward (Appendix I), an election ballot flowchart (Appendix J), and a presidential election flowchart (Appendix K).

The report’s conclusion – and indeed the entire report – is a must-read for all Americans concerned about election integrity. This excerpt from Part 6, Conclusions, is particularly poignant:

“From what we know, the Part 3 recommendations are the most comprehensive — yet reasonable — election safeguards proposed anywhere. These measures will assure that future elections reflect the will of the voters.

We expect that those who profit from the current system’s failings will aggressively push back. Since they will not likely acknowledge that their objections are self-serving, they will almost certainly resort to such deceptive standbys as “these regulations will disenfranchise some voters.” The politest answer to that is: hogwash.

Everyone would like to have more… more freedom, more money, more happiness, etc. The good news is that U.S. citizens CAN have more. Essentially there are three avenues to get more: 1) to work for it, 2) to be given it, or 3) to take it.

Being handed more (#2) is the underlying appeal to the concept of entitlements — where these handouts then evolve into becoming Rights. Unscrupulous narcissists promise that they can give us more of these new “Rights” — free college education, a guaranteed job, higher pay, equality with everyone, social justice, etc.

What few are acknowledging or discussing, is that Rights (real or fabricated) are always intrinsically tied to significant responsibilities. Everyone is naturally attracted to the idea of getting more — but it takes the buzz off to reveal that there is no free lunch. The reality is that hard work is required to earn that lunch.”

This report – and particularly its recommendations – needs to be given to every elected local, state, and federal official, especially those who are truly concerned about election integrity and who may be (or should be!) working on updating state election laws. Also, U.S. senators in both parties need to be lobbied hard to persuade them not to pass SR1 and replace it with a real election integrity bill based on this report’s recommendations. It is a matter of providing equal justice under the law for all Americans in conducting future elections.

The post How to Improve Election Integrity and Guarantee Equal Protection Under the Law appeared first on UncoverDC.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

On the day Apple was set to announce a slew of new products at its Spring Loaded event, a leak appeared from an unexpected quarter. The notorious ransomware gang REvil said they had stolen data and schematics from Apple supplier Quanta Computer about unreleased products and that they would sell the data to the highest bidder if they didn’t get a $50 million payment. As proof, they released a cache of documents about upcoming, unreleased MacBook Pros. They've since added iMac schematics to the pile.

The connection to Apple and dramatic timing generated buzz about the attack. But it also reflects the confluence of a number of disturbing trends in ransomware. After years of refining their mass data encryption techniques to lock victims out of their own systems, criminal gangs are increasingly focusing on data theft and extortion as the centerpiece of their attacks—and making eye-popping demands in the process.

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Months later, Antrim County is still in the spotlight regarding the alleged fraud in the 2020 election. On Friday, Apr. 9, Attorney Matt DePerno filed a response to his case in Antrim County because state officials and several counties have sought to “obfuscate” and “run the clock out” on discovery in the ongoing lawsuit.

Yesterday, the response went to Judge Elsenheimer in Michigan’s 13th circuit court, and he dismissed the “subpoenas issued to 8 counties to allow further discovery that would be “used as [a] control group” to confirm or deny assertions that the Antrim County election results were manipulated algorithmically.” Telegram’s @MichiganConservatives channel, as reported by @PatrickMByrne, announced the decision. To watch the proceeding, see here.

Judge Elsenheimer stated “The court finds that the information that the plaintiff (DePerno) seeks is not likely to lead to relevant information for the following reasons:

“The plaintiff has not put forth admissible evidence to show that there would be even a possibility of such recovery. The “experts” that have been identified to support its contentions—Frank, CyberNinja, and Penrose—while having interesting theories, are not expert witnesses that have, as of yet, been named within this court’s case management order and were produced in the waning hours after discovery had closed in this case.

“The plaintiff has not deposed the witnesses who may indeed know about the deleted messages and put them under oath. Discovery [period] is closed.”

There were some wins on Monday, however, for DePerno as captured from Byrne’s reporting of @MichiganConservatives Telegram post below:

DePerno appeared on the 100 Percent Fed Up Podcast on Monday with Jim Hoft and Patty McMurray after his hearing on Monday. He explained the latest developments in the case, including his alleged discovery that “Guy’s staff deleted critical data” from the Dominion Machines, that the machines were connected to the internet or, at least an intranet (state network), and the continued threats he receives as a result of his investigation. Deleting or changing data on the machines is a crime, according to DePerno, and he says she is purportedly being investigated.

DePerno also reminded Hoft about the modem chips found during the course of his investigation. Modem chips were found embedded in at least some Michigan Election Systems and Software (ES&S) voting machine motherboards. The chips make it possible to connect to the internet, which is significant because Dominion has repeatedly stated that its machines do not connect to the internet. “There was also a Dominion Machine discovered to have had communications with Taiwan and Germany during the elections. “Without question, the Dominion Motherboard has a slot to connect a modem. It is specifically designed for that,” he added.

The purpose of Monday’s hearing was to request data from eight counties in Michigan (nine including Antrim County) as a way to confirm or deny allegedly manipulated data in the November election. Since Sheryl Guy allegedly deleted the Antrim County data, DePerno needed evidence from other counties to prove his case.

Eerily similar algorithms were found in those 8 counties—as discovered and illustrated by Dr. Frank, an expert witness in the case. According to reporting by the Traverse City Record-Eagle,  DePerno contended in court filings that “Michigan was among four ‘battleground’ states that had implemented an ‘algorithm used to regulate and shift votes in the 2020 elections’ and that data from the eight counties would be used as a ‘control group’ to discern fraud in Antrim County.”

DePerno and his 47-page petition went viral on Friday as he explained both his reasoning for the response as well as the data therein. He hired a mathematician, Dr. Frank, who methodically explains what seems to be impossible scenarios that took place on election day in many counties in swing states. DePerno’s interview on Apr. 10 can be viewed here.

Frank uses data from three different databases; population data from the census as of July 2019, the state registration database labeled Oct. 2020, and the state voter database from Jan. 2021. He reportedly shows proof that voter registration is nearly the same or exceeds the population in the counties—among other findings. Below are some screenshots from his testimony that illustrate a sampling of his findings:

Frank demonstrates with a series of graphs that algorithms were basically used to regulate ballots. He says he knows this is true because the correlations shown are statistical impossibilities. He says algorithms were used as “keys” and that there are easily discerned patterns in the data—patterns seen in other states as well. He asserts that ballots were harvested at the precinct level, regulated at the county level, and determined at the state level.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has repeatedly stated that her state’s elections “were the most secure, accessible and successful in our history.” Benson purged the state’s voter rolls of 177,000 people after Biden won by 154,000 votes in November.

Michigan’s 2020 elections were the most secure, accessible and successful in our history. Now GOP lawmakers in our state are trying to pass laws to make it harder to vote and undo the very policies that enabled more people to vote than ever before.

Ready to fight back? I am. pic.twitter.com/HbbWMzO8QA

— Jocelyn Benson (@JocelynBenson) March 24, 2021

The lawsuit brought by Antrim County resident William Bailey and his attorney Matt DePerno found that “thousands of ballots cast for President Trump were counted as votes for Joe Biden,” as reported by UncoverDC on Dec. 14. However, yesterday in court, Frank Krycia, an attorney appearing on behalf of Macomb County, offered a possible explanation for the discrepancies, as reported by the Traverse City Record-Eagle attributed above:

“The machines were set to look for the dark ovals on the old ballot and then the ballots were changed,” Krycia said, of Antrim’s ballots printed in October, of which errors were found in some townships and corrected, without a corresponding update to voting machine software..”This caused an error in the preliminary results on election night, or shortly thereafter, which was then corrected,” Krycia said. “This was unique to Antrim County. Macomb didn’t have corrected ballots.”

During the process of the investigation, they allegedly discovered that Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy authorized her staff to remove files and data from the voting machines on Nov. 4, 2020, as she seems to “admit” in this video conference from a county board meeting.  She maintains in the video that she and her staff were poorly trained, and files needed to be fixed to accurately reflect the election numbers. Guy explained,

“Because we didn’t know we had to pull all the cards back, not just the ones we fixed,” Guy said about the ballot reprinting issue. “So when you are talking about who did it. I did it. My office staff did it. Under my authority to get those numbers right. It wasn’t fraud—it was doing my job. Getting my numbers certified. We truly did not have correct training with the Election Source new program.”

UncoverDC penned a recent and pertinent update about the ongoing battle between DePerno and Michigan Secretary of State (SoS) Jocelyn Benson. Benson has repeatedly denied evidence of election fraud.

The Antrim County lawsuit represents the first time an election fraud case has gone to the evidentiary phase. The forensic report was performed by a team of experts, including an expert witness from the firm Cyber Ninjas which is now leading the independent audit for Maricopa County in Arizona. Major news outlets have refused to report on the forensic findings in the DePerno/Bailey case. UncoverDC has covered the lawsuit from the moment Judge Kevin Elsenheimer of Michigan’s 13th Circuit Court granted forensic access on Dec. 6 to the voting machine equipment used in the 2020 election.

The post DePerno Continues Pursuit Of The Truth In Antrim County Election appeared first on UncoverDC.

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Is Protecting Hunter Biden’s Memoir From Bad Reviews.

Related: The Dirty Secrets on Hunter Biden’s Laptop Have Been Revealed.

• In 1991, Denmark constructed the world's first offshore wind farm.
• Now they're building an entire 'Energy Island' in the North Sea.
• As the U.S. catches up, Danish know-how could soon come to America.

Giant wind farms

​On Monday, President Biden designated a 'Wind Energy Area' in the waters between Long Island and New Jersey. It's part of an ambitious plan to build giant wind farms along the East Coast. There's currently only one offshore wind farm in the Eastern U.S., off Rhode Island (1).

When those wind farms get built, you can bet there'll be Danish companies involved. In 1991, Denmark built Vindeby, the world's first offshore wind farm. In the years since, Danish companies have maintained their global lead.

In February, the Danish government announced it would build the world's first 'Energy Island'. Everybody else in the world, take note: if the Danes pull this off, similar islands could soon pop up off your shores – perhaps also in the New York Bight.

So, what's an Energy Island, and why does Denmark want one? For the answer, we spool back to June 2020, when a broad coalition of Danish parties, left and right, in government and opposition, concluded a Climate Agreement. This is Denmark's plan not only to make a radical break with fossil fuels but also to show the rest of the world how it's done.

On the rise again

Due in large part to its pioneering work with wind energy, Denmark has a green image. But that hasn't always reflected reality. Yes, in 2019 the country generated 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources – earning it 9th place worldwide (2). But in 2018, Denmark also was the EU's leading oil producer (3).

Under the Climate Agreement, that will stop. Denmark will no longer explore and develop new oil and gas fields in its section of the North Sea. Extraction will be gradually reduced to zero. In exchange, Denmark will dramatically scale up the production of sustainable energy via offshore wind farms. The ultimate goal: nationwide carbon neutrality by 2050.

Offshore wind farms produce the bulk of Europe's sustainable energy. And after a dip in the first decade of the century, offshore wind farms are on the rise again (4). One reason for the increased popularity: taller turbines, which means larger blades, which means greater capacity.

• In 2016, the tallest turbines were 540 ft (164 m) and had a capacity of 8 megawatts (MW).
• In 2021, turbines can be up to 720 ft (220 m) tall, generating up to 12 MW.
• Soon, the turbines will reach 820 ft (250 m) – not that much shorter than the Eiffel Tower (1,030 ft or 314 m, street to flagpole). These will have a capacity of up to 20 MW.

Centralised management

As the shallow parts of the North Sea (<66 ft; <20 m) fill up with wind farms, the issue of managing the energy flow produced by these farms becomes acute. The obvious solution would be to build a central point where the energy is collected, converted from AC to DC and transmitted to one or more points onshore. Centralised management of the wind farms would mitigate the fluctuations in energy production and make it easier for supply to meet demand.

If supply is greater than demand, these collection points can also serve as storage units. Excess energy could be stored in batteries or transformed into hydrogen via electrolysis. If and when necessary, the hydrogen can then be transported onto land and reconverted into electricity.

The Dutch are thinking about it, and some have suggested the Dogger Bank as an ideal location: shallow and central within the North Sea, ideally placed to distribute energy to the various countries bordering the sea. But the Danes are doing it. The Climate Agreement envisaged not one, but two energy islands.

One would be Bornholm, Denmark's Baltic island, halfway between Sweden and Poland, which would serve as the hub for local offshore wind farms. But the other would be an entirely new, entirely artificial island in the North Sea, to be built about 50 miles (80 km) off Thorsminde, on the western coast of Jutland.

10 million households

In February, the Danish government revealed how much this Energi-Ø would cost, how long it would take to build – and what it might look like.

• Energy Island will be built via the caisson method – essentially, sinking a watertight box to the bottom of the sea. The island will be protected from storms by high seawalls on three sides. The fourth side will feature a dock for ships.
• Construction could start in 2026 and is expected to take three years. Building the wind farms and transmission network will take a few years more. By 2033, it could be churning out its sustainable GWs.
• In its initial phase, the island will have an area of about 12 hectares (30 acres, or about 18 soccer fields). It will centralize the production of about 200 offshore wind turbines, with a joint capacity of 3 GW. That's about the equivalent of 3 million households – slightly more than the total for Denmark.
• When fully completed, the island will have an area of around 46 hectares (114 acres, just under 70 soccer fields), collect the energy of 600 turbines, for a total capacity of 10 GW (5). That covers 10 million households.
• 10 GW is equivalent to about 150 percent of Denmark's entire electricity needs (households, industry, infrastructure, etc.) That leaves plenty of scope for supplying neighbouring countries. Agreements have already been reached with Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The plan also foresees a plant for hydrogen production on the island, either to be piped onshore, or stored and transported in large batteries.

Yet untested aspects

In all, the island would cost DKK 210 billion (US$33 billion) to build – by far Denmark's largest construction project (6).

The project will be undertaken in a public-private partnership between the Danish state and commercial interests. Because it is 'critical infrastructure', the state will retain a stake of at least 50.1 percent in the project. There are two scenarios for co-ownership:

• The island will be owned in its entirety by a company, in which the Danish state retains at least that smallest of majorities;
• Private companies will be able to own up to 49.9 percent of the island itself.

The Danish government needs private-sector input to overcome unknown and as yet untested aspects of the project, not just in terms of design and building an entire island from scratch, but also on how to operate and maintain it, and even when it comes to financing and risk management.

But where there's risk, there is potential. If the project is successful, it will become the blueprint for similar energy islands the world over – and the companies that helped build the first one, will be in high demand to build the other ones too, perhaps soon in Biden's 'Wind Energy Area'.

Green, as the Danes have discovered, is not just the color of nature. It's also the color of money.

Strange Maps #1077

Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.

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(1) Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, a two-turbine pilot project 23 miles (43 km) off Virginia Beach, was completed last year.

(2) The Top 10 (2019) are Iceland (79%), Norway (66%), Brazil (45%), Sweden (42%), New Zealand (35%), Austria (38%), Switzerland (31%), Ecuador (30%), Denmark (30%) and Canada (28%).

(3) With 5.8 megatons of oil equivalent (Mtoe), Denmark beat Italy (4.7 Mtoe) and Romania (3.4 Mtoe). Oil production in the EU is on the way down. It peaked in 2004 (42.5 Mtoe) and has since halved (to 21.4 Mtoe in 2018). A similar trend has occurred in the two key non-EU oil producers in Europe. a. Norway's oil production peaked in 2001 (159.2 Mtoe) and has since more than halved (to 74.5 Mtoe in 2018). b. The UK's oil production peaked in 1999 (133.3 Mtoe) and has since been reduced by almost two thirds (to 49.3 Mtoe in 2018).

(4) The Global Wind Energy Council estimates that in 2020, a record 82.3 gigawatt (GW) of new wind power capacity was added, a 36% increase over 2019.

(5) The Bornholm energy hub is projected to top out at 2 GW.

(6) Inaugurated in 2000, the famous Øresund Bridge (Øresundsbroen), connecting Sweden to Denmark, cost about DKK 25 billion (US$4 billion) in today's money. When it's finished (by 2029, if work continues apace), the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link (18 km) between the Danish island of Lolland and the German island of Fehmarn, will be the world's longest road/rail tunnel. It will have cost about DKK 55 billion (US$ 8.7 billion).

On Friday, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed SB 202, the ‘Election Integrity Act of 2021.’ The bill is intended to ensure election integrity in Georgia’s elections by placing restrictions on voting by mail and greater legislative control over how elections are governed. But the measure failed to address a pivotal component of the state’s election disaster last November, specifically electronic voting equipment.

Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, who sponsored SB 202, currently has a separate omnibus election bill awaiting consideration on the Senate floor. His 45-page HB 531 aims to amend Chapter 2 of Title 21 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated “relating to elections and primaries generally, to provide that no election superintendents or boards of registrars shall accept private funding; to provide for related matters; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.”

What ever the outcome of today's vote on GA HB 531, and other legislation regarding election Integrity, that I have faith in God's plan, and pray for the best. May cooler heads prevail! https://t.co/LnFUOcLCIA

— Christopher M Carrusca (@RealCMPC) March 29, 2021

The amended bill would, among other security enhancements:

• provide for the certification and testing of voting equipment;
• provide for the use of overt, covert, and forensic level security elements on ballots;
• provide for the storage and retention of absentee ballots by precinct with a secure chain of custody;
• provide for a high-security end to end secure supply chain for ballots using a secure print facility, restricted security inks, restricted ink markers, and verification devices for the security elements on ballots;
• provide for the maintenance of certain lists of absentee voters; provide for certain audits;
• provide that it shall be illegal to observe how an elector votes.

Facing clear opposition from the radical left, the measure was amended last week by the Senate Committee on Ethics to allow counties to buy their own voting machines amid distrust over the new Dominion Voting Systems machines that made their debut in Georgia in last year’s elections. The proposed bill states:

“The State Election Board, the members thereof, the Secretary of State, and any of their attorneys or staff shall not have any authority to enter into any consent agreement with any other person that limits, alters, or interprets any provision of this chapter without obtaining the approval of the General Assembly through a joint resolution.”

The current law indicates all primaries and elections in the state “shall be conducted by ballot, except when voting machines are used as provided by law.” The amended bill states, “a ballot shall contain a paper component, even if produced on an electronic ballot marking device.” 

Further revisions are proposed relating to the official primary ballot and the form of the ballot in nonpartisan municipal primaries to include adding the name and designation of the precinct on the top of all ballots, including absentee ballots. The bill is further amended related to voting by ballot, adding a new section to read as follows:

“Every ballot used in primaries and elections in this state, including paper ballots, ballots used in optical scanning voting systems, and ballots produced by electronic ballot markers shall have overt, covert, and forensic elements embedded in the ballots of which some of these security elements can be validated at the polling place at the time of voting. Such devices or seals shall not be capable of identifying the elector who cast the ballot but shall be designed to restore voter confidence in the ballot and to prevent fraud.”

While the current law relating to voting equipment in the state reads, “The equipment used for casting and counting votes in the county, state, and federal elections shall be the same in each county in this state and shall be provided to each county by the state, as determined by the Secretary of State,” the proposed amendment, which indicates each vote shall produce a verifiable paper trail, states:

“The governing authority of a county may purchase, lease, or otherwise acquire any election system that has been certified as eligible for use in this state by the State Election Board.”

The bill further amends municipal governing authorities’ power relating to the installation of voting machines, discontinuance of use of paper ballots (which is currently part of the Code), minimum number, different types, and requirements for working order and capacity as follows:

“Voting machines of different kinds may be used for different precincts in the same municipality so long as all voting machines produce a verifiable paper trail.”

Moreover, the current bill is amended by revising regulations relating to safekeeping, certification, and validation of absentee ballots, rejection of ballot, delivery of ballots to the manager, duties of managers, precinct returns, and notification of challenged elector. It also adds changes regarding scanning absentee ballots, stating:

“Beginning at 8:00 A.M. on the second Monday prior to the day of the primary, election, or runoff, the superintendent shall be authorized to open the outer envelope of absentee ballots that have been verified and accepted in such a manner as not to destroy the oath printed thereon, remove the contents of such outer envelope, or to open the inner envelope marked ‘Official Absentee Ballot, and scan the absentee ballot using one or more ballot scanners. At least three persons who are registrars, deputy registrars, poll workers, or absentee ballot clerks must be present before commencing; and three persons who are registrars, deputy registrars, or absentee ballot clerks shall be present at all times while the absentee ballot envelopes are being opened and the absentee ballots are being scanned.

The proceedings set forth in this subsection shall be open to the view of the public, but no person except a person employed and designated by the superintendent shall touch any ballot or ballot container. Any person involved in processing absentee ballots shall swear or affirm an oath, in the same form as the oath for poll officers, prior to beginning the processing and scanning of the absentee ballots.

The ballots shall be subject to security review at all times by authorized security auditors trained and equipped to detect ballot fraud. Upon the conclusion of the counting, the absentee ballots shall be sorted and stored by precinct in security sealed containers. Best practices of chain of custody for such containers shall be maintained and subject to authorized security auditors inspection and review until such ballots can be legally disposed of.”

HB 531 passed the House on Mar. 1 and was read for a second time by the Senate Ethics committee on Mar. 25, where it remains for further debate.

The post GA Election Integrity: Separate Measure Aims to Address Electronic Voting Equipment appeared first on UncoverDC.

Former President Donald Trump is returning to social media. Only this time, it will be on his terms. Adviser Jason... View Article

The post Trump to return to social media on ‘his own platform’ in 2-3 months appeared first on Sara A. Carter.