Thread by @SEGreenhalgh

Internet voting has been snarkily called the "#Theranos of voting." #ElizabethHolmes trial watchers may be surprised to know HOW similar, as internet voting vendors pulled one of the exact same tricks that #Holmes did, which led to her fraud conviction. Thread 1/

One of the most damning pieces of evidence that compelled a guilty verdict in the #Holmestrial was the fact that Elizabeth put logos from pharmaceutical companies, like @pfizer, on reports that Theranos itself had authored, so that it looked like Pfizer endorsed the findings. 2/

Well, funny story. Voatz, a blockchain internet voting system vendor, wrote a report that purported to be findings of a @DHSgov assessment of their system. And they went ahead and slapped the DHS seal and logo right on top, so that it looked like the report was written by DHS.3/

But Voatz didn't stop there. Voatz held a press call and said "there are some audits happening for which information is publicly available. One of them was conducted by the DHS. That’s report is available on our website, so if you go into the FAQ section, you’ll find a report."4/

Here's the call. blog.voatz.com/?p=1243 There was no DHS report on the website, but there was the report that Voatz had written with the DHS logo on it, snip below. 5/

Evidently the report was also distributed to reporters by the WV Secretary of State (a big Voatz booster), and described as a recently declassified DHS report. See the correction on this story- 6/ coindesk.com/markets/2020/0…

"CORRECTION: Because of inaccurate information provided by the West Virginia Secretary of State's office, an earlier version of this article misdescribed the subject document as a declassified DHS report. It is a summary published by Voatz of a still-classified DHS report." 7/

In fact, that correction needs a correction.The report is not "still-classified;" it never was "classified."DHS does these sorts of assessments as a service to industries. The reports are not made public and provided only to the subject company, who could make it public. 8/

Was the WV SOS told by Voatz that the report was a DHS report? That should be worth investigating because not only is it creepy to put the @DHSgov seal and logo on something and pretend it's a DHS report, it's actually a crime. dhs.gov/use-department… 9/

It's time to start investigating the false and misleading claims from vendors of internet voting as they push their products across the country with zero oversight. freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/upl… END