People at the top edges of an organization, public or governmental, made the decisions on which software to buy. They typically overlook those who actually use it and offer too little or training by people who are not particularly interested in being around others. Individuals who would have gone into a different field if they were people-people. The software arrives, sometimes some of the bugs are worked out, and someone pushes the “go” button. Then, they wonder why there are problems.
Users are told to use it or lose it, their jobs that is. It is tough to learn when a person is terrified of a major enforced change, as most of us are, at least a little bit, and fearful of losing their jobs.
Michigan’s and Georgia’s local governments bought software from Dominion Voting Systems for the heavy election lifts. The company provides voting machines, ballot-counting machines, and software for governments to collate and tabulate the election results.
Dominion sells software all across the country. The idea that “software glitches” caused mistakes in the two state’s communities was wrong, baseless, according to The New York Times.
So what was the problem? Troubleshooting showed that only two of the five counties that ran into trouble used Dominion software. In addition, the counties had a troubleshooting ticket for every issue, and the cause was never the software.
According to the Michigan Department of State, county officials, and election-security experts identified human errors as the source of the mistakes. Only one of the two counties with problems used Dominion.
In Georgia, the troubleshooting found a definite link between the software and official reporting vote tallies being delayed. However, the problem did not affect the vote count. Georgia had two other counties that used a different company’s software. It slowed the poll workers’ voter check-in process, but again did not affect the vote outcome.
Election-technology expert at the OSET Institute, which studies voting infrastructure, Edward Perez said:
‘Many of the claims being asserted about Dominion and questionable voting technology is misinformation at best and, in many cases, they’re outright disinformation. I’m not aware of any evidence of specific things or defects in Dominion software that would lead one to believe that votes had been recorded or counted incorrectly.’
The Right-wingers and conspiracy theorists blamed Dominion for errors in the voter tallies. Naturally, Donald Trump shot a Breitbart News article into Twitter world. The article was filled with misinformation, blamed the software company, and erroneously linked Michigan and Georgia’s problems.
The Rochester Hills, Michigan Republican clerk Tina Barton said that the county’s votes were rapidly counted two times. She posted a video online:
‘As a Republican, I am disturbed that this is intentionally being mischaracterized to undermine the election process. This was an isolated mistake that was quickly rectified.’
Election security expert Harri Hursti went to Georgia. He said:
‘People are comparing apples to oranges in the name of Dominion.’
Election-technology researcher Edward Perez noted that more transparency and accountability from the software companies would have been better. However, there was zero evidence of fraud or systemic errors in the 2020 election:
‘It’s reasonable for citizens and politicians to look at the role of private vendors in the machinery of democracy and to ask questions. Now that doesn’t mean elections are rigged.’
The featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
