The Green Party’s 2016 presidential nominee Jill Stein declared victory Thursday in a legal fight over her effort to personally examine whether voting machines in Wisconsin were vulnerable to attacks.
In a statement, Stein celebrated a Wisconsin court ruling against a “gag rule” sought by a top voting machine vendor hoping to ensure that she can not speak her mind about the result of an impending voting machines inspection.
“If the voting machine corporations had their way, we’d be prohibited from disclosing our findings under penalty of law, even if we discovered evidence of problems that could have changed the outcome of the election,” Stein said.
“The only reason for voting machine corporations to push for a gag rule was to prevent us from revealing any problems with their machines, which would threaten their ability to keep profiting off our elections,” she added. “It’s outrageous that we’ve had to go to court to argue that the integrity of our elections is more important than protecting corporations.”
In a ruling in December, Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke rejected a petition by Election Systems and Software, a company in Nevada that builds and sells voting machines. While affirming a decision by the Wisconsin Board of Elections, he said the confidentiality agreement agreed to by Stein’s campaign meets the requirements of a statute prohibiting the disclosure of “proprietary information,” which includes the source code of voting machines.
Ehlke found that ES&S wanted to go too far in seeking “specific conditions prohibiting the Campaign from publicly discussing its beliefs of criticisms formed after reviewing petitioners’ proprietary information.”
Ehlke also noted that the campaign is subject to strict security measures required by the commission, which includes the use of a secured room with “read only” access to view the software, where devices like cellphones would be banned.
Since 2016, ES&S has come under scrutiny for decisions that experts fear could leave their machines vulnerable to attacks. Vice’s Motherboard reported last summer ES&S admitted in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that it had installed remote-access software on election-management systems from 2000 to 2006. Wyden told the outlet at the time that such a move “is the worst decision for security short of leaving ballot boxes on a Moscow street corner.”
Stein received about 1 percent of the national vote in the 2016 election, her second run for president as the Green Party’s nominee. She made waves after the election, raising over $7 million to fund recount efforts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — more than she raised during her campaign — that resulted in only one successful electoral review in Wisconsin. It added 162 votes to President Trump’s lead.
As an extension of Stein’s recount effort, she also won the right to examine the voting machines in Wisconsin and has pushed hard against private ownership of the technology. “It’s outrageous that our election systems are owned by private corporations that claim a proprietary interest in keeping critical information secret from the public,” said Stein campaign spokesman Dave Schwab, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.
Asked to comment on when a voting machines inspection might take place, Schwab indicated to the Washington Examiner that despite Stein’s victory, the future remains uncertain. “We are eager to conduct the forensic examination, and are moving as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we anticipate that the vendors will likely appeal our victory,” he said in an email.
ES&S didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Ehlke’s ruling.
Experts have said Wisconsin, which is a key swing state, was targeted by election meddling efforts by the Russians in 2016, including disinformation campaigns.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission acknowledges that the Badger State’s voter registration system was targeted in 2016 by “Russian government cyber actors.” But the commission said that with the help of the Homeland Security Department, Wisconsin’s Division of Enterprise Technology successfully protected the state’s systems from attack. “The Commission has found no evidence that Wisconsin’s election systems have ever been compromised,” the commission emphasizes in bold on its website.
