"Kamala Harris won the U.S election"

MSN Headline & Article Mix Fact & Fiction

Was There tampering?

Yesterday an article went up on MSN.com with some very serious statements about the 2024 election with information and quotes that were attributed to us - SMART Elections. We appreciate the long overdue focus on this issue.

Unfortunately MSN.com is blurring the lines between a theory and confirmed facts. In our search for the truth, we have to be clear about whether something might have happened or whether we have evidence it actually did happen.

In this post, we’ll help you sort out facts from conjecture.

You might not care.

You might think, “I know something happened, so what difference does it make what it was?” In our view it does make a difference to find out what actually happened.

1. Because we’d like to protect our elections from interference, so it helps to know exactly where the problems are.

2. It’s unfair to assume someone is a bad actor, without first getting evidence that they are. That’s not really any different than giving immigrants or anyone else due process.

3. In both a fair democracy, and the scientific process, we try to explore the facts and come to conclusions based on those facts.

—> LATEST UPDATE: There’s also a new article out from Newsweek covering our lawsuit in Rockland County, NY challenging the results of the 2024 Presidential and Senate elections.

Overview of the Events Covered in the MSN.com Article:

The article covers software and firmware updates to 2024 election technology and asks whether those updates had the necessary security and transparency. Although the article gets some of the details incorrect, we agree with the article’s overall conclusion that there were serious failures in the security and transparency of the updates. We disagree with the article’s claim that this proves Kamala Harris won the 2024 presidential election. It’s just not that simple.

Regarding the updates: You want technology to get updates. It’s an important part of good security practices. Often that is how you protect against known vulnerabilities that are discovered. You do a software update.

But in this case, the website of one of the testing labs approved to give software updates, was in disrepair for months. The testing lab, ProV&V is one of two that are authorized to approve software updates for U.S. election technology. Was their website hacked? Unknown. Was the company hacked? Unknown. They say they were building a new website, and eventually after months, a new rather incomplete, lame website did emerge.

Is the testing lab Pro V&V sloppy? Definitely. Are we concerned about all the software updates they released. You bet we are. Can we say conclusively that there was some kind of malware in those updates that changed vote totals. No we cannot. That’s why we’re in court. To get that kind of information.

The MSN.com article reads like a film script, and that’s because it’s a kind of fictionalized version of the real research that we did. They didn't specifically credit our research, or link to the Substack where we posted our investigation, instead they cited an "investigative piece from Daily Boulder.” We’ll walk you through the various re-printing and re-posting of the original investigation that we put out in February 2025, which turned into a game of telephone, where each article distorted their source article a little bit more.

Here is our original reporting on this story.

Let’s go point by point through the MSN.com article, so we can clarify the facts and help you steer clear of falsehoods.

First, lets talk about the title:

“Kamala Harris won the U.S elections: Bombshell report claims voting machines were tampered with before 2024”

We did not claim that in our report. We did not state that Harris won the election. We did not claim that the voting machines were tampered with.

What we’ve said in court or on our website or Substack is that the results of the 2024 election look incorrect. In some cases they look programmed. In one race, we have definitive evidence that the results are actually incorrect, but that is the U.S. Senate race. In our lawsuit, we’ve requested a full hand recount of both the presidential and senate election results from one location in the 2024 general election to help figure out what happened.

Here is more on our report on the election technology updates:

A Disintegrating Website

In February 2025, we published an expose on our Substack (linked above) describing the erratic behavior of a voting machine testing lab website.

This lab is called Pro V&V it is one of two labs entrusted with testing the voting machines prior to their certification by the federal government.

We noticed that the Pro V&V website looked like it had been hacked. The front page said, "Hello world!" in big pink letters. It had the vibe of an unfinished blog post of a 13 year old. We looked up the site on the Internet Archive and saw that the website had been malfunctioning for months. At least as far back as July 2024, the site showed error messages instead of pages. Most of the website was actually down when we looked at in February.

Today, there is a functioning website at ProVandV.com, however, there’s not much to it and it’s missing information.

There is only the home page with an email and phone number. All links take you to other sections on the same page. One section is missing information. The text says: “Pro V&V can perform audits in the following areas per request” … but there’s nothing there. What areas are they referring to? It’s like a one-page, unfinished business card. There’s minimal information about how they function, and no way to know whether they’re trustworthy.

Even more concerning is that during the time that the website was malfunctioning in 2024, the lab continued to issue software and firmware updates to voting machines and other election technology.

In our February report, we showed the Engineering Change Order (ECO) of each update that we initially found that took place in 2024. These are updates to software, firmware and various devices that connect to the voting machines or other election components There were four updates that we found in our first report, between March and September, and they went out to many, possibly most U.S. voting machines. Going back to the EAC website this time, we located more ECO’s (updates), which we’ll list below.

MSN.com Article Misses the Mark

Our concern about the Pro V&V updates to voting machines and election technology is twofold:

First, the changes were made by a testing lab whose website seemed to be in complete disrepair for months. That could indicate that the company is not following good security practices, and we are worried that if the company was penetrated by hackers, the official software or firmware could have been used to download malware into the voting machines, without anyone noticing.

Secondly, two of the software updates control the conditions under which the voting machine gives an alert if an unapproved program is running.

The MSN.com article lists the software update controlling the operating system alert as an “Electionware reporting system update.” That’s fair. But they also list a serious update that did not happen. They say that new ballot scanners were installed.

• We do not see an update that installed a new ballot scanner. There are modifications to scanners such as:

  • ESS-1154 - introduces modifications to the DS300 Ballot Box to improve the usability and manufacturability of the Ballot Box.

  • Adjusting the ballot box is different than introducing a new scanner.

MSN.com does not mention a relatively serious update that was approved on February 26, 2024.

DVS-100961 The Election Management System model was updated on Dominion X 5.17 systems. That is one of the latest, Dominion systems. However the technical advisor we consulted says this is basically upgrading a piece of equipment to a new model, due to the unavailability of the old model. He agreed with the lab it is a “De Minimis” change.

We list the two 2024 Pro V&V updates we consider the most serious below.

A Game of Telephone

Here is the sequence of articles that led to the MSN article.

June 7th, 2025. A Substack post called Dissent in Bloom published a piece about our Rockland County lawsuit challenging the 2024 election and also discussed the Pro V&V updates. She read our research on Pro V&V, although initially she did not link to it. Some of her piece was factual, some a stretch. After we contacted her, she pulled it back a little, and linked to our website, but other media outlets had already picked up the somewhat exaggerated content.

June 8th 10:15pm. (The article is listed in GMT) The Economic Times picks up the original claims from Dissent in Bloom about the Pro V&V updates, including the incorrect claims that updates included new ballot scanners.

The Economic Times article claims the updates made “sweeping changes” which, as far as we can tell, they did not.

The Economic Times attributes some text from the Dissent in Bloom Substack to SMART Elections, such as, “This wasn’t just a glitch in some sleepy county. It was a stress test of our entire system.” We didn’t say that. She did.

June 9th 1:57 pm. The Daily Boulder runs the same story. They add a line from Dissent in Bloom at the end of their story, “But one thing is now certain: The voting machines were changed. No one was told.”

Again, this is an exaggeration. The voting machines were changed in updates that were approved by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). We’re not huge fans of the EAC, it’s a toothless agency that’s been captured by voting machine vendors in our opinion. But it’s not factually accurate to say “no one was told.”

People were told about these updates. The company issued the Election Change Orders (ECOs), and the Election Assistance Commission has Election Technology Specialists that signed off on them. They put them on the EAC website. How do you think we found them? Granted it’s not a huge announcement, but it is available for the public to view.

June 9th. Shortly after The Daily Boulder publishes their article—MSN.com runs the story as well.

MSN.com attributes even more quotes from Dissent in Bloom to us that we didn’t say (sorry for Dissent in Bloom that her expressive language got credited to us.)

The MSN.com piece distorts the facts in the Rockland County lawsuit, saying, “Voters said they couldn’t even find her name to select.” No one has claimed this that we’re aware of. There are districts with zero votes for Harris. It’s definitely a weird voting pattern, but no one is claiming she wasn’t on the ballot.

The MSN.com article also says the Pro V&V debacle is included in the lawsuit, but the two are separate. There is no mention of the Pro V&V software issue in our lawsuit.

Malware Can Hide in Software of All Sizes

Malware can lurk in updates, both small and large. If there’s malware hiding in a software update, a small tweak could land a fatal payload. The point is not that these updates made “sweeping changes”. The question is whether the Pro V&V website being in disrepair is any indication that the company’s security is also in disrepair. And whether or not there is sufficient transparency and oversight with these updates.

The latter is a point that Dissent in Bloom makes when she says, “No one was told.” In DMs with her, she added, “Filing an ECO isn’t the same as telling the public. These changes weren’t announced or meaningfully communicated. Most voters had no idea they happened. People need to be notified.”

Here are the software and firmware updates that we located in our original report:

• DVS-100975 - A new SD card

• ESS-1168 - Updates to help with electrostatic discharge (ESD)

• DVS-100936 - An update to get rid of an error message

• ESS-1188 - The configuration that determines under what conditions the system gives an alert if it’s running different voting system software than the one that was approved was updated.

Here is a link to the 2024 election technology software updates that we’ve located additionally now. There were quite a few more than we realized. We’ve itemized them in a spreadsheet.

The two updates that are the most serious to us are one of the ones we reported previously and listed above:

• ESS-1188 - The configuration that determines under what conditions the system gives an alert if it’s running different voting system software than the one that was approved was updated. (September 16, 2024)

As well as:

• ESS ECO-1167 - This order changes the circumstances under which an alert will be generated when the system is running different voting system software than what was approved. (April 9, 2024)

One expert we consulted said, “That is a major change and should require closer inspection as to what the changes are. This affects the cryptography keys and identity assurance of the device. “

Let’s Get the Facts Right

Usually we're happy when mainstream media brings attention to our work and we have had plenty of mainstream coverage.

Please see our press pages with articles from Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Daily News and more featuring our work.

In this case, while we appreciate the attention, and overall agree with the possibility that malware may have changed the outcome of the 2024 election, the details in the MSN.com article are off-base in both small and large ways.

This story is shocking as is. We don’t need to exaggerate it. Since people are already mistrustful of the media, it’s especially important to get the facts correct.

Our overall assessment of the MSN.com article is that:

• It mixes fact and fiction

• It does not accurately reflect our research

• It does not give proper credit for our research or a link to our Substack.

• Is says we said things that we did not say, and does not correctly credit the author of those statements.

That said, it brought a good deal of attention to bear on a critically important topic that many media outlets have been hesitant to explore, and that was very helpful! So we appreciate those steps forward.

Finally, on a more humorous note, no one bothered to mention that the Pro V&V logo looks like the illuminati logo. Huge missed opportunity.

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