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Philadelphia Common Pleas Court denied Stein camp forensic audit of voting machines

The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas today denied a full forensic analysis of voting machines and their software, as requested by the Stein campaign recount e...
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein Discusses Recount Effort

The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas today denied a full forensic analysis of voting machines and their software, as requested by the Stein campaign recount effort.

Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party nominee for president, has been pushing for recounts in three influential electoral college states. Pennnsylvania is one of the three where she filed a federal lawsuit to have votes recounted in a handful of the Commonwealth’s 67 counties.

The injunction requested that experts in voting security and software be allowed to examine the central voting systems in the largest counties using the six types of DRE machines present in Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Allegheny, Montgomery, Lancaster, York, and Washington counties.

In spite of the 2016 election results, Stein has insisted that there was either voter fraud or voter suppression, or both, used during Election Day, and was a significant reason President-elect Donald Trump won the race for President. Stein said in a statement, the only way to guarantee the accuracy of election results is to perform a forensic audit of voting machins.

“The court’s decision will deny voters the chance to know the truth about this election,” Ilann Maazel, counsel at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady and lead counsel, said. “The only way we’ll know if this was a secure and accurate election is if we’re able to do a full forensic analysis of these machines, which experts testify are easily hacked, have been hacked by college students in a lab setting, and are banned in California and other states. The federal courts will now have a chance to do right by the people of Pennsylvania and order such an analysis.”

Trump won Pennsylvania narrowly on Election Day. The Commonwealth pushed Trump over the top of the 270 electoral college votes needed by 70,000 votes.

“Because Philadelphia’s voting machines do not keep a voter-verified paper record of each vote cast, we can’t be sure that these machines have accurately tallied the votes,” Prof. Daniel Lopresti, Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, said. “That is why a full forensic analysis of the machines and their software is necessary.”

 

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