Thread by @jennycohn1

“KNOWiNK is a St. Louis-based tech firm tied to voting delays in Georgia, Ohio and Texas last week, and the frequent target of complaints for its work in New Jersey.” - 11/12/20 1/ njspotlight.com/2020/11/mail-i…

2/ “Immediately after the July primary, officials said they discovered that KNOWiNK was unable to reliably update basic information such as a voter’s address and eligibility.”

3/ “Although they pressed their concerns with the state throughout the summer, even airing their issues with the governor’s office, the officials said nagging glitches persisted.”

4/ “In 2019, Philadelphia was forced to abandon its planned use of KNOWiNK’s poll books only two months before an election.”

5/ “‘The city should not use this electronic poll book system in an election unless there is complete confidence that it will perform reliably,’ Stephanie Tipton, the city administrator, wrote to the city’s election board.”

6/ Knowink’s “poll books were also blamed for long delays in the Georgia state primary that year. One year later, in June 2020, KNOWiNK’s tech was identified as the culprit in an Election day meltdown that caused long lines in some Los Angeles voting precincts.”

7/ “In New Jersey, software issues linked to KNOWiNK delayed the delivery of absentee ballots to overseas military voters in this year’s primary. There were also reports that the state computer was cutting off apartment numbers on mail-in ballots.”

8/ “Local officials said they routinely sent in trouble tickets to the KNOWiNK help desk, which were promptly acknowledged. But many of the problems persisted, including maddening foul-ups with addresses.”

“‘The [Knowink] system kept changing information back after we updated it,’ said Nicole Dirado, administrator of the Union County elections board. ‘Voters kept being placed in the wrong towns.’” 9/

10/ “State elections officials and representatives from KNOWiNK did not respond to detailed questions submitted earlier this week by NJ Spotlight News. Media reports have said computer issues tied to KNOWiNK were responsible for voting delays in four states last week.”

11/ Local election are also concerned that the state, with early voting, could be headed into new territory that is even more dependent on high-tech.”

12/ “‘The bottom line for us is that we have to trust what the computers are telling us,’ said Melfi, the Hunterdon County clerk. ‘This year, we found we just could not believe in a lot of the information the state [Knowink] system was giving us. That can’t continue.’”

13/ Article by @JPillets

14/ I wrote about concerns with Knowink for @TheDailyEdge before the election. thedailyedge.substack.com/p/hacking-our-…

15/ Wow. Another article from November about failures involving Knowink electronic poll books. 11/4/20 govtech.com/security/Digit…

16/ “Voters in parts of Georgia, Ohio and Texas all experienced various levels of system disruption with their ePollbooks provided by the vendor, KnowInk.”

17/ “In Nevada, voters in some Clark County precincts had to wait for their digital poll books to access their voter records before polls could open.”

18/ “DeKalb County in Georgia, population 760,000 and heavily Democratic,” allowed “two polling places to stay open an additional 40 to 45 minutes because of ‘inability to operate the poll pads as designed, preventing voters from casting their ballots…’”

19/ “Franklin County, Ohio, ditched their ePollbooks for paper records at 5:30 a.m. after election officials couldn't determine why they were malfunctioning, said Ed Leonard, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections…”

20/ “Similarly, voters in Upshur County, Texas, extended voting hours through 8 p.m. after their KnowInk ePollbooks yielded ‘connectivity issues,’ according to a spokesman at the Texas Secretary of State's office.”

19/ “Poll book problems happened across Spalding County, which is south of Atlanta. The 61k-person county voted for Trump in 2016 by 61%. Poll workers checked registrations & did a manual override of the ballot marking devices, which led to long lines.”

20/ “Spalding County extended voting until 9 p.m.”