>>147093, >>147094, >>147095, >>147121, >>147122, >>147125, >>147126, >>147127, >>147129, >>147189, >>147190, >>147195 pb

Jan. 1, 2005 - This is a request for all communications to or from your elections jurisdiction and Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and or Microvote

Bev Harris

@BevHarrisWrites

THE HUNT FOR JOE BOLTON

In case you don't read the whole article:

1: Scroll to the interview. 5 parts. Stay till the end, I guarantee you it's informative.

1. Please don't go chasing after this guy. I am certain he's no longer in the business, if he's still alive. But by all means, knock yourself out finding out about his counterparts because they still exist and they're scattered all over America. You'll find some of them with public records requests.

• • • • *

Public records request:

DATE: Nov. 21, 2006

This is a request for all communications to or from your elections jurisdiction and Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and or Microvote, including the consultants and contractors hired to assist with the implementation of the ES&S or Microvote system for your jurisdiction. This is for ALL COMMUNICATIONS on all topics with ES&S and Microvote or any agent or contractor of ES&S or Microvote. The time frame that applies to this records request is Jan. 1, 2005 through the date that you fulfill this records request.

• • • • *

Subject: '06 gen election

Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006

Organization: Menifee County Clerk

My office has not received anything in writing from candidates or anyone else pertaining to the 2006 General Election… I use Kentuckiana Election Service, Joe Bolton.

Menifee County Clerk

Jo Ann Spencer

WHO'S JOE BOLTON?

His territory in Kentucky counted 184,802 voters in the 2004 presidential election.

I eventually caught up with Joe. I transcribed the interview, below. Again, skip to the interview if you don't want to read about the search process.

Let's start with this: Procedures that give one guy access to voting machines that count nearly 200,000 votes with no oversight whatsoever are at the very least, not prudent.

People had to trust their votes to someone named Joe, who was not an elected official and not even a government employee. They probably didn't even know they were trusting Joe with votes because newspapers didn't mention him and county clerks had no line item for his invoices.

WHY PICK ON JOE?

People like Joe control an essential part of the public commons. Basically, these people are acting on behalf of the state.

KENTUCKIANA ELECTION SERVICES: THE SEARCH

• No physical address. Post Office Box in a small town called Royalton.

• Telephone search: No listings found within 50 miles of Royalton

• News archive search going back 30 years: Nothing. Likewise for the name Joe Bolton – found SOME, none were the Joe Bolton who works with elections.

• Corporations database: Found 1990 certificate showing that Kentuckiana's corporate credentials were revoked. Apparently never reestablished.

Did he service voting machines in his house?

• Background check: Once married to a Carla Bolton.

• Search on Carla Bolton: She was County Clerk – that is, she ran elections – for Floyd County, Kentucky.

With my assistant Natalie, I drove to Floyd County.

At the Floyd County Courthouse was told that Carla Bolton was no longer county clerk. They hastily mentioned that she and Joe are no longer married. (Why so hasty? See the end of Joe's interview, part 5.)

The new county clerk said Joe came in and picked up the voting computer's memory cards and worked on them in his home. She showed me the jail, where voting machines were stored.

I ran a reverse search on a number found at the top of a public record and found it listed as Joe Bolton's home phone number, with a road but no address, located the road using Google satellite map, and drove to the remote location.

We looked at every dwelling to see if Joe might be in there working on voting machines. It was a Sunday afternoon, and several residents got out of their lawn chairs to peer at us.

cont…

cont…

"Not from around here," they seemed to be thinking, so we stopped and chatted with a couple friendly women, who told why they put their trash in cages. "To keep out the dogs and bears," they said. They didn't know Joe or where he lived.

We had no luck at all finding Joe Bolton, but later I did reach him later on a cell phone number provided by staff members at the Floyd County Elections office. I've spoken to Joe Bolton three times now and he answered a lot of my questions.

INTERVIEW WITH JOE THE VOTING MACHINE GUY:

BH = Bev Harris

JB = Joe Bolton

PART 1

BH: Do you ever communicate with candidates when you're programming the election stuff?

JB: No, I don’t work with the candidates personally.

BH: Okay. Would you consider it proper or improper to be communicating with candidates for someone who does what you do?

JB: Yeah, 'cause I don't do nothin' like that!

BBV: Okay. Well you've been doing this for 35 years, has anyone ever asked you to do something that made you uncomfortable?

JB: Oh, absolutely, get it all the time, I get that all the time you know.

BH: You're kidding me!

JB: "Could you rig this machine?" And I don't know whether it's a conspiracy or a joke, you know, "Could you rig these machines for me Joe? How much would it cost me?" I've heard that for 35 years.

BH: So how did you get involved in this 35 years ago, I didn't think there were voting machines 35 years ago?

JB: Yeah, we had machines. The old mechanical machines.

BH: Oh, lever machines. I have never seen a lever machine and I probably never will see one, either. Darn!

JB: You get to Kentucky, I got a little museum in my garage.

BH: That's great! You may have the last remaining lever machines, before they sell them off for the scrap heaps.

BH: Okay, so what do you do with those MicroVote and ES&S machines, I've never been clear what the subcontractors do.

JB: Well, you know, all I do is I make sure that they're working as the PEBs come in. ES&S, they do the programming and stuff, all I do is I, me and my men go out and check and make sure that the ballot is the proper ballot for that particular precinct and everything is working, set 'em up, wait for Election Day.

BH: So you sort of do – is that a logic & accuracy test? Is that what that is?

JB: Yes.

BH: Okay, so basically ES&S programs them, they send you the PEB, and then you-

JB: I'll look at the candidates and make sure the PEB is working before I ship it to the clerks.

BH: Is there a central tabulator or is there like a machine like a central election management system with these?

JB: ERM

BH: Yeah, that's what it's called, ERM or Unity or something like that. And so, do you work with that too, or just the PEBs.

JB: I don't work with it personally myself, I have guys, that are trained.

https://x.com/BevHarrisWrites/status/1858004287936422000

cont…

>>22004621

cont…

@BevHarrisWrites

PART 2 - How Joe gets paid?

BH: I just wanted to clarify, are you paid by the counties or by ES&S?

JB: It's no one's business how I'm paid.

BH: Well, but it's a public record. Because I have a contract with the counties and ES&S for your services I think.

JB: I don't think so. You don't have that, that's for sure.

BH: But, so basically – well who employs you is all I'm trying to find out.

JB: It's mainly the county clerks employ me.

https://x.com/BevHarrisWrites/status/1858004290050338982

@BevHarrisWrites

PART 3 - VOTING MACHINE PROBLEMS

JB: It's probably not the equipment. You'll find in most cases it's the states that have the problems, it's the laws they write, it's the election officers. Mostly across the United States our election officers the average age is about between 55 and 65, some cases older. And they're dealing with electronic stuff now.

BH: Well you know the iVotronics in Sarasota though lost 18,000 votes. You heard about that I assume.

JB: Oh yeah. That was earlier days.

BH: Well I'm talking about last November.

JB: Last November?

BH: Uh-huh.

JB: In Florida? They lost 18,000 votes?

BH: Yes. In one county. And it was a race that was separated by about 386 votes. I think Dan Rather has a report on TV on that but I don't get the channel that he's on.

JB: What was the cause of it?

BH: Apparently they made their touch-screens in the Philippines and they had some kind of thing called a pillowing effect in the touch-screen and it wasn't recording or something, it had to do with a subcontractor who made some touch-screens. From what I understand.

And for more on that problem, we may be lucky enough to have @miketangoromeo join this thread, because he does known what happened in Sarasota and it had nothing to do with pillows.

JB: It was a manufacturing defect?

BH: Probably. Yeah.

JB: Yeah. It can happen in anything.

BH: Well it doesn't happen if you mark a paper ballot with your pencil, you're not going to have 18,000 people break their pencils and not be able to get a new one.

https://x.com/BevHarrisWrites/status/1858004292231483473

cont…

>>22004622

cont…

@BevHarrisWrites

PART 4 - Joe tells us how to rig paper ballots

JB: Let me tell you something young lady, I'd love to tell the House and the Senate, on the floor, in the capitol of the United States of America. I can take any paper system you got out there and with one person in one precinct, one crooked election officer, you can control that election all day long. Think about it. You'd say "How?"

BH: Sure, I'll say "How?" Educate me.

JB: Okay. One election officer is all I need, that handles the ballots. He makes a mistake earlier that morning and gives me two instead of one. All right? I go in, and I vote mine, take it over and put it in, and I'll stick one in my shirt. Take it outside. I vote like that all day long, have the people mark their ballots outside, take the ballot in, bring me a blank ballot out. At the end of the day, the last person going through the door, I'm going to make sure it's my buddy, and he's going to have two ballots, the election officer's going to hand him one, and he's going to start towards the machine, and he's going to turn around and go back and say "I'm sorry you gave me two." You ain't gonna be missing no ballots.

BH: Okay, why is there a machine. I missed something.

JB: I just controlled the election all day long by voting paper ballots.

BH: Okay let me understand. The person who's putting it in their shirt is the election official, right?

JB: No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about a voter that has been paid to go in and see this particular election officer. He hands him two ballots that morning. Okay. Accidental. Whatever you want to call it. And he votes the one, then he votes, takes it over to the machine, he puts it in, it counts, he takes the one in his shirt and gives it to the guy outside somewhere, that guy stops the next voter that he's supposed to pay, gives him a ballot already marked, that voter brings out him a blank ballot, he marks it for the next person, that voter brings him out a blank ballot, you do that all day long, and like I said the last person goes in, he's got a blank extra ballot. And he tells the election officer, he says, "I'm sorry, you've made a mistake here, you gave me two, so he hands it back to him. There's no count whatsoever that's off. You've got all the ballots accounted for.

BH: Yeah, you have the blanks, yeah that's right.

JB: You've voted everybody in that precinct how you want to vote that day. That's how simple it is, young lady.

BH: Okay. That's true. But you'd have to get a lot of people involved.

JB: No I just said, one election officer.

BH: But you'd have to get a lot of voters involved. Because every voter there would have to agree to take a payment.

JB: (Chuckles.) Believe me. It's done every day. It's done every day.

BH: Okay, so you're saying that – I mean, how many – in order to say, flip the governor's race, remember when they had the primary last May and there was only like a few hundred votes separating the Democrat, Beshear or whoever it was – well let's say a few thousand. It would be tough to do a few thousand votes that way, wouldn't it? Without a lot of—you'd have to have a person for every vote.

JB: Like I say, you know, it could happen in one precinct, it could happen in 10 precincts in that county, it could happen in 20 precincts in that county. It just depends on how crooked that county happens to be.

BH: I'm really interested in what you're telling me.

JB: That's one way. And I hope you understand, okay, that's one way that you can do it.

BH: How do you recruit people to pay them off?

JB: I'm not doing it.

BH: I mean, not you, but how would they, because it seems like—

JB: I don't use paper ballots.

BH: I know that there's folks that really are concerned about paper ballots.

JB: We are in Kentucky. We really don't want it. We don't want paper ballots.

https://x.com/BevHarrisWrites/status/1858004294605353000

cont…

>>22004624

cont…

@BevHarrisWrites

Part 5 - Joe gives his opinion on election rigging

BH: Uh-huh. How much do you suppose it costs? I'm just trying to figure this out, because you know California, Washington, Oregon, we're like a whole different place, we're the Left Coast, right? So we don't do things that way. But wouldn't it seem like it would cost a lot to pay people?

JB: You might not think they do things that way. You just don't believe the people out there, what they'll do for a dollar.

BH: So it's cheap to do it, you think? I mean I know it's done, because in West Virginia there was an election official that sold their own vote.

JB: I'm not saying it's cheap, you know, or it's cheap or it costs a whole lot. I don't know personally, not personally, but I have heard a lot of rumors, of what people done, okay?

JB: Well you know, it’s the way you can do it. Yeah, you know, like I said, I would be more than glad to testify before the House and the Senate, you want to talk about does the voter's vote really county, you know, you start dealing with paper you're dealing with a total mess. We bought the machines, you know that it only accepts you, that vote, to count. That's what a voting machine is designed to do young lady.

BH: Except for, you don't know – how do you know what in the world they're doing with the PEB cards in Omaha Nebraska?

JB: I could prove to you that I don't care what you do that what goes into that machine – we have a signature list. If 325 people vote on that machine, that's what it says: 325 people.

BH. Uh-huh.

JB: Now, you're saying that if ES&S or some other voting machine company programs this machine for Jack Smith to win, how do they know how many votes will be cast on that machine?

BH: [Describing hacking test done in film "Hacking Democracy"]: On the memory card, it accepted negative votes, minus votes, so what the guy did was he estimated, oh let's say 'x' number of voters will come in, and he put in some minus votes and plus votes that equaled each other out, so that when the voters were coming in all day, they both end up positive and you have the right number of votes.

JB: That's exactly done on an election? Not just a fling-flang that somebody set up to show it could be cheated?

BH: No, it was actually done on an actual voting machine in an actual county, we randomly chose it off the shelf so there would be no way to do it, and the only thing that the hacker needed was the memory cards, he didn't need to touch the machine at all. And what he did was he exchanged the cards and slipped it in right before the election.

JB: Why would a company like ES&S, Hart, Diebold or anybody else put their reputation and their company up for somebody in a state or a county or federal or anything else?

BH: Well why would they know it though?

Because, you just said a voter will sell their vote for a few bucks, or however much it is, and it's not the head of the company that programs the PEBs, it's just some guy that may have a gambling problem or whatever, so all they need is one guy who's willing to solve his gambling problem.

JB: Yeah.

BH: But it would be tough on you or anyone else wouldn't it?

JB: Yeah. I guess I can't argue with you there.

BH: Okay.

JB: So let me ask you this, since you've done all this, paper, electronic, and all this stuff, what the hell's the solution?

BH: Well the solution has to allow the public being able to see more of what's going on.

Because even though you're going to have some messes here and there, you don't want to have a situation where only the government, or only a few programmers in Omaha know what's going on. So that's one kind of safeguard that would help.

cont…

>>22004627

cont…

JB: You know, I take what I do seriously, believe me. Like I said, if there's a better way, a better solution, I'm all for it. I think, in my years, dealing with the attorney general's office, and the election laws that we've had passed in Kentucky, part of it's been my suggestion, and I'm proud of what I do. And what people talk about cheating, it totally pisses me off.

BH: But in a way you don't have control of it either. You're caught in between one thing and another, trying to do the best job you can.

JB: I'm in the poorest part of Kentucky, you Eastern Kentucky. You know, there's nothing up here for the people. Kids have to leave, one thing and another. They treat folks up here like they're dirt. I'm originally out of Cincinnati, I came here after I came back from Viet Nam, in 1968. And like I said, these folks up here will give you the shirt off their backs. I hear all this stuff from other states, you know, hillbillies, dumb-ass hillbillies, snotty-nosed hillbillies, one thing and another. But they're decent, good people. Now I'm not saying that there aren't people out there that would sell their votes, there probably are. But you know, paper is not no damn solution in this United States of America today, I can tell you that. Talk about fraud, we'd have it runnin' out our asses.

BH: Don't you think one person can affect more votes, with computers, if they're so inclined?

JB: Only if you don't have the checks and balances.

BH: Okay, let me ask a question. Because I'm going to write an article and it's going to have to do with you, and it's going to have to do with Kentucky, I'm going to write about how it's structured there. And I'm going to say some nice things about you. But I'm also going to say – unless you can answer this – well here's my real question:

If a person did what you do, and they were not honest, how would anyone know?

JB: (Thoughtful pause). The answer to that question I really, I don't know. Honestly. I really don't, you know. I don't know how to answer that for you. I really don't.

I didn't want to pry, but I asked Joe why they seemed uncomfortable in Floyd County when I asked them about his ex-wife, who had been an election official there.

"It was a short marriage," he says. "They run her outta there."

She was indicted for embezzlement. Because as Joe pointed out, "You just don't believe the people out there, what they'll do for a dollar."

8:28 PM · Nov 16, 2024

https://x.com/BevHarrisWrites/status/1858004297134617047

WHO IS JOE BOLTON? Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and or Microvote

>>22004621, >>22004622, >>22004624, >>22004627, >>22004629 bun

✈️A rough map of missile and drone flights during today's attack on Ukraine

17NOV2024

@ukraine_watch

https://t.me/ukraine_watch/32674