Ben Cotton, an IT expert proficient in forensics and digital systems analysis, issued a declaration last month about flaws with Maricopa County’s voting machine tabulators. It was included in Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s latest pleadings in their complaint challenging the use of voting machine tabulators in elections. One of those findings was that unauthorized executable programs were installed on the machines at least three times during the 2020 election, which could be used to alter election results without detection.
Cotton, whose firm CyFIR was hired by the Arizona Senate in 2021 to audit the 2020 election, summarized his findings, “It is clear, based on my findings, that unauthorized programs, databases, configuration settings, and actions were present on the voting systems in Maricopa County for the elections in both 2020 and 2022.”
Regarding the executable programs, he said, “The Maricopa EMS has a compiler installed that provides the ability to modify and create executable files and drivers on the fly that could be used to alter election results without detection. There is evidence new executable files were created at least three times during the active voting period in 2020.”
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) did not authorize the programs to create the executable files when the agency approved the software on the machines. “These programs are not found as part of approved and certified Voting System Platform software that is listed on the EAC’s Scope of Certification posted on the EAC’s website,” Cotton said.
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