Recent doubts are being raised over the 2024 US election after experiences alleged {that a} federally licensed testing lab accredited quiet adjustments to voting machines forward of the vote.Watchdogs declare the adjustments weren’t correctly examined or introduced. Kamala Harris misplaced that election to Donald Trump, however critics are questioning whether or not machine updates might have influenced the result, based on a report by the Every day Boulder.On the centre of the controversy is Professional V&V, an accredited voting system testing laboratory. The agency accredited updates to ES&S voting machines, that are utilized in practically half of US counties. Nonetheless, Jack Cobb, the lab’s director, insisted that the updates have been insignificant.“There actually is not any change of any significance,” Cobb advised Newsweek through e-mail. He defined that the adjustments concerned changing outdated printers, adjusting poll bins and containers, shifting file storage places, and including mounting brackets to machines. This info, he mentioned, is accessible on the Election Help Fee’s (EAC) web site.Issues over transparency and testingBetween March and September 2024, Professional V&V signed off on 4 updates to the software program and firmware of voting machines. In response to SMART Elections, a nonpartisan watchdog, these updates impacted many voting machines throughout the nation.Regardless of the scope, the updates have been marked as “de minimis” by the EAC, that means they have been thought of minor and didn’t require additional public testing. SMART Elections warned that this designation raises dangers, claiming it might permit malware or vulnerabilities to enter techniques with out being detected.“These weren’t minor tweaks,” said the Dissent in Bloom Substack. “They touched poll scanners, modified audit recordsdata, and even affected machines flagged by CISA. However by calling them ‘de minimis’, they averted full testing, public scrutiny, and transparency.”Requested about such claims, Cobb advised Newsweek, “Most of those articles are utterly made up.”Lawsuit calls for full recountIn response to the controversy, SMART Laws, the authorized arm of SMART Elections, has filed a lawsuit in Rockland County, New York, demanding a full hand recount of the 2024 presidential and US Senate races. A courtroom listening to has been scheduled for 22 September.What occurred to the corporate web site?After the election, observers famous that Professional V&V’s web site grew to become practically non-functional. “The web site collapsed right into a hole shell” shortly after the 2024 vote, mentioned Dissent in Bloom. As of June 2025, it stays a fundamental single web page.Cobb responded that the location was solely down for a couple of days in February and has been “operating ever since.”Belief within the system eroding?SMART Elections wrote on its Substack:“Why would we belief an organization that has let its web site disintegrate publicly for over six months, to check advanced digital tools that we depend on to find out who controls the treasury, the navy and the coverage of our total nation?We must always not. We don’t. We don’t belief these voting machines. We don’t belief the labs that check them.”The group is looking for the whole system to get replaced with a clear, verifiable mannequin that may publicly show the safety of each vote.
