‘Cyber Ninjas’ to refute Michigan report on election errors in lingering lawsuit
A Michigan judge on Monday said he’ll allow a dozen tech and election experts, including the Florida firm Cyber Ninjas and others who alleged election fraud following the November presidential election, to refute a secretary of state election report that determined mistakes in Michigan voting results were caused by human error and didn’t signal vulnerability or tampering with election machines.
Cyber Ninjas is the name of a Florida-based consulting firm owned by Doug Logan, who’s expressed support for election fraud “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theories on social media. The company was recently hired by the Republican-majority Arizona Legislature to conduct an audit of election results in Maricopa County. That audit began last week.
Now the Cyber Ninjas, as well as other experts put forth by the plaintiff in an ongoing election fraud lawsuit, are likely going to weigh in on challenges to results in Michigan’s Antrim County.
Many of the experts have been involved in other election challenges across the nation, sometimes espousing debunked data in support of their election fraud claims.
Proposed experts include: Retires Col. James P. Waldron, a cyber security expert who during post-election hearings before Michigan lawmakers cited incorrect reports that indicated 100% or more eligible voter turnout in some Michigan precincts; Russell James Ramsland Jr., a cybersecurity analyst and former Republican congressional candidate who produced the erroneous voter turnout report after apparently confusing Minnesota cities as locations in Michigan; and Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence officer who has alleged numerical voting anomalies that would suggest fraud.
A full list of the expert witnesses is available here.
Antrim County Circuit Judge Kevin A. Elsenheimer said expert witness testimony or any reports they produce should address only claims made in a report published by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office that was produced by J. Alex Halderman, a computer security and systems specialist and professor at the University of Michigan.
Halderman’s March 26 report, entitled “Analysis of the Antrim County, Michigan November 2020 Election Incident,” outlined procedural and computer-related flaws he found while reviewing Antrim County election results.
Antrim County became a focal point for election challengers after the clerk there reported incorrect preliminary results that indicated now-President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump in the conservative-leaning county.
The incorrect results were identified the morning after the election and were quickly pulled down from the county website. A hand count of the precincts revealed Trump won with nearly 57% of the vote.
Halderman blamed the election night debacle on the “mishandling of last-minute ballot design changes,” but said it’s “unlikely to have occurred widely in Michigan during the 2020 election.”
“Although vulnerabilities in election technology are well documented, the Antrim County incident was not caused by a security breach,” he said. “There is also no credible evidence that it was caused deliberately.”
Because the county clerk’s staff failed to properly update election software after last-minute changes to some county election ballots, the machines miscounted votes for the incorrect candidates, the secretary of state’s office and county officials said — and Halderman confirmed.
The Halderman report was presented as a rebuttal to an earlier analysis filed as part of the Antrim County lawsuit by the plaintiff, William Bailey of Central Lake Township. Bailey’s attorney, Matthew DePerno, hired Allied Security Operations Group, led by expert witness Ramsland, to conduct a forensic audit of the election in Antrim County.
That report “was essentially a report that said Dominion Voting Systems is designed to intentionally create errors in order to influence an election and then discusses some of the security breaches that were discovered in analysis of the Antrim County voting system,” DePerno said in court Monday as he argued for the addition of new expert witnesses in the case. “The Halderman report goes well beyond that.”
Judge Elsenjeimer said he will allow DePerno’s expert witnesses 30 days to produce a report contesting the secretary of state’s report.
A non-jury trial scheduled to begin June 8, but is being rescheduled for a later date due to litigation delays.
The next hearing is set for May 10, during which the judge is taking up a motion for dismissal of the lawsuit on claims that it is moot and that the plaintiff lacks standing to proceed.
More on MLive:
Judge reins in sprawling election lawsuit case
Clerks allege fishing expedition
Communications with Trump campaign are irrelevant, judge rules
Zuckerberg and wife donated millions to Michigan election clerks
SOS ordered to turn over communications with big tech
Plaintiff claims SOS is withholding records
Antrim County hand recount results in 12 new votes for Trump
Software isn’t good at detecting human error
Election recount, legal challenges unlikely to overturn Biden’s win in Michigan
Judge allows forensic investigation of Dominion machines
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