Thread by @ericgeller

Senate HSGAC hearing on 2020 election starting now: hsgac.senate.gov/examining-irre…

Chairman Johnson, kicking things off, says, “Much of the [fraud] suspicion comes from a lack of understanding of how everything works.”

Johnson: Voting technology “should not be connected to the internet, but we found some do have the capability of being connected, and there are allegations that some were.”

Johnson: To figure out if any voting machines were compromised in this election, “computer science experts must be given the opportunity to examine these allegations.”

Johnson is reading from recent congressional letters to voting machine manufacturers in which lawmakers requested information about vendors' security practices.

Implication seems to be that discredited reports of hacked machines are in fact credible because of general concerns.

"This hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies, and it’s a destructive exercise that has no place in the United States Senate," Ranking Member @SenGaryPeters says.

Johnson, after Peters castigates him for emboldening conspiracy theorists: “I don’t see anything dangerous … about doing legitimate congressional oversight. Nothing dangerous about that whatsoever.”

Ken Starr ends his testimony with a non-sequitur attack on mail-in voting, saying that it was used in a scheme to try to prevent the election of Abraham Lincoln.

.@EACgov Vice Chair Donald Palmer, a conservative Republican: “The EAC has confidence in the voting systems we certify.”

“While elections are sometimes messy, this was a secure election," @C_C_Krebs says. "Of that, I have no doubt.”

Johnson asks Krebs about internet connections in voting systems, part of his argument that there was fraud.

Krebs says some machines may temporarily use modems to transmit unofficial results but paper records provide auditability.

Not sure Johnson got the answer he wanted.

“I think we’re past the point where we need to be having conversations about the outcome of this election,” Krebs says, calling the continued right-wing campaign “ultimately corrosive to the institutions that support elections.”

"This is not disinformation, this hearing today," Johnson says, sounding angry after Peters and Krebs warn against promoting disinformation.

Intense argument just now between Johnson and Peters.

“You lied repeatedly in the press that I was spreading Russian disinformation," Johnson says, "and that was an outright lie, and I told you to stop lying, and you continued doing it.”

Peters said he didn't know what "rabbit hole" Johnson was going down.

As experts have shown, Johnson's claims have leaned on Russian disinformation, and his fellow Republican senators have urged him to stop. justsecurity.org/71947/how-sen-…

Krebs: “I was never directly approached on any Rumor Control changes or alterations. I understand my staff was. I told them that if anyone had any problems with what was on Rumor Control … they would need to come talk to me about that. And I never got that phone call or visit.”

Krebs just debunked the Antrim County voting machine audit that Lou Dobbs et al. have been gushing over.

He explained how the one specific election management system error cited in the report didn't show any fraud, just potentially bad C# coding practices.

The error says "there is no permission to bracket 0 bracket."

Krebs: This error "is a placeholder for a parameter. So it may be that it’s just not good coding. But that certainly doesn’t mean that somebody tried to get in there and zero [out a vote]."

Asked by Sen. Hassan if Trump and his allies have done enough to condemn threats to election officials, Krebs says, “I’m not aware of much condemning of violence, having been a recipient of some of [the threats].”

“This is not an America I recognize, and it’s got to stop.”

“Democracy in general’s fragile," Krebs says. "If a party fails to participate in the process and instead undermines the process, we risk losing that democracy.”

Johnson asks Krebs if he's concerned about Trump lawyer's claim that they weren't allowed to see voting machines' source code.

Krebs agrees on need for "appropriate...transparency" but says there are "multiple controls in place throughout the system."

Johnson interrupts.

Yep. Trump lawyers are bringing up concerns that experts and Democrats have been raising for years, mostly to silence from Republicans.

https://twitter.com/Joseph_Marks_/status/1339258243978317826

Pretty much every time House Admin chair Zoe Lofgren sent a letter to vendors challenging them on their security and transparency practices, the ranking member, Rodney Davis, only appended a question or two about ADA accessibility.