By Patrick Colbeck
The primary duty of clerks is to maintain legal records pertinent to their jurisdiction. Clerks maintain chain of custody for vital records such as property titles, board meeting minutes, and charter amendments as these records are often used in court proceedings. Election records also fall under this responsibility.
The execution of this duty is not without its challenges.
In the wake of the 2020 election, clerks all across America are being told by electronic voting system vendors that they must make their voting equipment available for “preventative maintenance”. The maintenance of the records on these machines are the responsibility of the clerk.
So, how can a clerk monitor changes to these records especially when they are performed by vendors?
Make a copy of the voting equipment configuration before and after “preventative maintenance”. The following tool and others like it can be used to make images of the electronic data on voting equipment with relative ease and without putting the content on the source drive at risk of modification.
In addition to this Falcon device, you will need a unique storage device for each piece of voting equipment. This storage device should feature USB 3.0 interface for best performance and must have sufficient storage space to capture an image of the source device.
Performing one’s duties as a clerk, however, are not without risks in today’s hyper-partisan, lawless America. Tina Peters of Mesa County, Colorado took images of her equipment before and after vendor “maintenance”. She is now being investigated for criminal charges by the Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold for doing her job.
Electronic voting systems connected to the internet (yes…despite assertions to the contrary, there is plenty of evidence confirming internet connectivity of voting systems) essentially centralize the management of elections. Much like in Maricopa County, AZ, it was interesting to note that it was the state not the county who was in possession of Dominion administrative credentials for the election. This centralization of our election processes is a clear threat to the integrity of our elections as it enables fewer and fewer people to control larger and larger segments of our voting jurisdictions. In many states, the clerk role in the conduct of elections has been diluted to the point of merely serving as a drone worker taking orders from the queen bee. The clerk election role has been marginalized and electronic voting systems enable elections to be managed in a top-down manner.
The only way to restore integrity to our election processes is to decentralized our election systems and eliminate electronic voting systems. Until that happens, clerks need to take a more active role in the preservation of electronic in addition to paper records pertinent to the election record chain of custody.
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