Editor

I am sending this inquiry to you as well as all city council members and all Bryan County Commissioner. Is there anyone who is concerned that our new elections supervisor Olivia Chapman, who briefly introduced herself a while back ago in the BCN, begins her reign on a stated foundation of instilling confidence in the Dominion Voting System?

And well, why not since they have unquestionably performed so magnificently in recent elections in Georgia, across the nation and around the world. Everyone knows these machines can’t possibly be accessed through the internet, which would allow for manipulation of vote counting since there is no cable plugged into the back of the machine, right? As a former federal employee, my personal information, and that of my family is already on file with the CCP in China, as a result of the 2015 data breach of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

As a marginally successful small business owner, I have had to deal with new programs crashing my hard drive, intellectual property theft through clever manipulation and selective presentation of internet data mining to the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) for adjudication under a legal procedure schedule that was markedly accelerated due to the special COVID-19 crisis adjusted protocols.

In addition, a major local hospital system had its medical records system locked and held for ransom several months ago and is now in the process of recreating medical records without using the prior compromised system for data transfer.

What I (hopefully, we all) learn from those happy experiences and expensive reliance on cyber security consultants is that computers and all related electronic data processing machines are always, ALWAYS, potentially unsecure. To think otherwise is at best foolishly naïve; at worst willfully feigned ignorance in preparation of avoiding responsibility for any future hacker breach when, NOT if, it occurs.

The last time I mentioned my insecurity regarding this insecurity to local election officials, I was assured that they had been assured by our Secretary of State that the machines performed perfectly over the last two election cycles and all the problems that have been publicly exposed will be fixed AFTER the 2024 election.

This reassurance was as comforting as knowing that this public servant was recently re-elected after winning the Republican primary by just “clearing the 50% threshold required to avoid a runoff election by just over 27,000 votes, according to the latest AP tallies.

Based on early voting data alone, 37,144 former Democrats who decided that it was acceptable to vote for him in the Republican primary — hmmm, why does this cause my BS meter to start pinging?

I ask you also to consider that the last Chairman of the Bryan County Board of Elections (BCBoE) has moved back north after serving for one election cycle, and is no longer chair of the board, based on what I have been told by BC election personnel.

I attended several BCBoE meetings prior to the last election, whenever the meeting time or location had not been changed without any notice of the change posted on the county web site or when the meeting was not cancelled due to lack of a quorum.

There was more than one of each of these situations in the year leading up to the last primary and general election. One thing that I noted when I attended hese meetings was that none of dedicated citizens of Bryan County demonstrated much in the way of being tech savvy. No intent here to reflect negatively on these good folks, just that they were about my age (OK boomer!), or mostly older and inherent tech-ability is pretty much a generational thing, so any tech experience of these folks is likely to be, like mine, hard learned and applicable only in specific situations.

This leads me to struggle mightily with the plan of a starting point of confidence in these machines by our election officials and an unquestioned acceptance that all will be well because they say it will.

I must add that in researching to write this letter I learned that the conclusion of the recent Fulton County Board of Elections investigation, was that clearly nothing illegal happened in either of the last two election cycles that would justify disciplining any election workers or officials. This is because the law, which they quote extensively in the official response to the investigation states that any “possible election law violations” must occur in two consecutive election cycles to be considered illegal.

Consider that for a moment. If this legal standard was applied to everyday banksters, one would have to get caught robbing the bank twice in a row in order to be charged with a crime. So it never happen right? How about two out of the last three?

Maybe that is a topic for another therapeutic diatribe, another day.

If any of us have learned anything over the past three years, it is that unquestioning acceptance of anything our government tells us can be a recipe for community self destruction leading to disaster. Just ask the lady I saw last week in the post office still wearing a black mask known to be ineffective in preventing COVID transmission and who was carrying her young son who had a similar one (child’s size) on.

You could see the fear in her eyes, bravely risking exposure in a public venue with so many unmasked potential super spreaders breathing the same air as her baby.

Apparently she’s not aware of Dr. Wallensky’s latest testimony or Uncle Joe’s declaration that the pandemic is over (for now).

Finally, at long last, my question for our officials, elected and not, from our city, county and state, and my fellow citizens is, since we are clearly going to continue to use the darn machines, do we have an independently vetted cyber security team on the job to monitor our voting system statewide with the goal of insuring, to the greatest degree possible the absolute integrity of the vote counting AND public reporting with transparency and timeliness, the status of the elections as they are conducted and afterward. There also should be in place, enforced by each local Sheriffs’ office procedures in place to ensure that all valid vote scanning and counting will only occur with all interested parties in attendance, since we can be sure that all the ceiling cameras will be offline the next time (‘we won’t make that silly mistake again’).

Yes, there will be a cost for this cyber security but as one learns with hiring lawyers, the most expensive one is the one who is not competent for the job that needs to be done.

Anyway our next election will determine whether Georgians and likely, citizens in the rest of the US, prefer to exist in a state of progressive dependence on government to meet our every need and keep us safe from any risk of living (No One Left Behind) or do we doggedly cling to our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to succeed or fail based largely on our own motivation and effort (No One Held Back). In order to achieve this with regard to the next election cycle we must abide by the maxim; TRUST BUT VERIFY.

I appreciate your patience in reading. My references are as follows. https://sos.ga.gov/ sites/default/files/forms/ FultonCountyBReResponse_ 0.pdf https://georgiarecorder. com/2023/06/23/ despite-concerns-georgiaelection- officials-plan-todelay- voting-fixes-till-after- 24-election/ https://www.wabe.org/ thousands-of-democratsvoted- in-gop-primariesto- block-trump-picks-ingeorgia/ https://www.c-span. org/video/?528571-1/centers- disease-control-director- testifies-covid-19-policies 

Tom Byrnes, Living happy in Richmond Hill since 1995.