On August 4th, Double M Publishing released Hal Malchow’s latest book, 42 MILLION TO ONE, a political thriller about voting machine manipulation. In this book, Lucy Gilmore, a young reporter, becomes convinced that our voting machines are being manipulated and election outcomes changed. She undertakes a journey in which she discovers a series of real events demonstrating how easy it is to hack a voting machine and how hard it is to get caught
Excerpt
1
Lucy Gilmore
One summer night in Charleston, South Carolina, I saw something I was not supposed to see. I wasn’t even looking. That is God’s truth. But I saw. And the next thing I knew my whole world was turning upside down.
My name is Lucy Gilmore. At the time this story begins I was 25 years old and a reporter for The Washington Post. I had attained this lofty position at a young age after, as a cub reporter in Rock Hill, South Carolina, I uncovered graft in City Hall and was fired by my editor, a close friend of the mayor. Jobless but determined, I dug through the city dump to find the documents I needed and took them to the Charlotte Observer, which ran the story. The whole trium- phant martyr thing was cause for celebration in newspaper circles. A job offer from The Washington Post followed.
Okay, that’s all good but that’s not the story I am here to tell. I’ve got a better story, much better. It begins in Charleston, South Carolina, on primary election day in 2018. You see, my uncle, my beloved uncle, Vince Rawlings, was running for the United States Senate. I drove down from Washington, D.C., for his primary elec- tion night party.
His Republican opponent was Jim Mintura, a pompous Tea Party incumbent senator. Vince had never run statewide. He had been a circuit judge. But in a recent SCIndex/Crantford poll Vince had pulled within seven points of Mintura even though hardly any-body in South Carolina even knew who my uncle was. So Democrats, while still skeptical of his chances, were starting to talk my uncle up. The primary was a whole other matter. Vince was basically unopposed. Basically. He had an opponent named Barry White. White spent no money, made no campaign appearances, and had no website. I later learned that his filing fee of $10,400 was paid anon- ymously. His campaign strategy seemed to be to hide in his house and hope no voter would knock on his door. So all we thought about that night was the upcoming fall campaign against Jim Mintura. The celebration was held at eight that night at the Southend Brewery, one of these new brew pubs that had gotten pretty popular. It was a refurbished warehouse and when you walked in the door the first thing you saw was a big row of stainless steel tanks telling you their beer was fresh. Vince’s party was on the second floor, one cavernous room that overlooked the harbor. We retreated to the back corner of the room and gathered around one TV.
In most victory celebrations, the candidate waits in a suite several floors up and, when the outcome is clear, he or she makes a grand appearance, a sometimes gracious speech, and, of course, regardless of the outcome, thanks all who had given their time and money for the campaign.
But Uncle Vince was right there in the room chatting, giving hugs, glowing in anticipation of the small victory he was about to achieve. I walked up behind him and tapped his shoulder. He turned, opened his arms, and consumed me in a huge hug that I was, frankly, damned proud to receive. He stepped back and looked at me with a large smile.
“Lucy, you look great. Congratulations on getting that job at The Post. No one deserved it more.” Then he paused and his smile spread. “How are those Cubs doing?”
Okay, I am a Cubs fan. Holy Jesus. I am a huge Cubs fan. But more on that later.
“Not as well as you are going to do tonight, Uncle Vince.”
I thought back to the year my father died. I was 12 years old. My mom was cold and distant. We were no help to each other. For months, I could hardly leave my room.
But Uncle Vince stopped by the house at least twice a week. He talked to me about life and adversity and how if I could not get my dad back at least I had to make him proud. He told me I was special, and he described to me the great person I might become. Gradually, at his urgings I found my feet again.
As I looked at Uncle Vince, I retrieved my handkerchief—I always carry one—and wiped my eyes.
Boy oh boy, there we all were: me, Uncle Vince, and about 40 friends, waiting to cheer, celebrate, and raise a glass honoring the first step on his journey to the United States Senate. All eyes watched the TV screen waiting on the first returns.
The first 12,000 votes were reported at 8:41 p.m.: 4,800 for Vince, 7,200 for his opponent, Barry White. Those were surprising numbers, but this unknown candidate was not going to beat Uncle Vince. Then came a second report and a third.
With half the vote counted, White had 52,289. Uncle Vince’s total? 33,483. How could Barry White be winning? No one in the room had even heard of this guy.
Vince’s campaign manager leaned over his laptop, scanning returns.
“Something’s wrong,” he said. “Something is very wrong.”
A group of supporters surrounded his computer screen hoping for an explanation. Geography told us nothing. Except for Vince’s home county, White led almost everywhere. That couldn’t be. The manager stood up and scratched his chin, confusion darkening his face.
An assistant ran to the table.
“Walter,” the assistant said, referring to the manager. “I got a call from the Secretary of State’s office with some surprising information.”
“What?” the campaign manager asked.
“We may be losing in almost every part of the state, but in half the counties we are winning the absentee ballots with 80 percent. Overall, we are winning the absentee votes by 11 points. Does that ever happen?”
“Never,” he answered.
The manager kneaded his brow. Then his face went white. “Oh my God,” he said, almost in a whisper. He left to talk to Vince.
* * *
As the returns poured in, I was as confused as everyone else. So I sought out some people I knew to be well informed in all matters of South Carolina politics. Slowly, some pieces of the puzzle began to emerge.
First, if White was winning the polling place ballots and Uncle Vince was winning the absentee ballots, what was the difference? The difference was that the absentee ballots, in most counties, were counted by hand. All the other vote totals came from a machine.
Second, South Carolina had bought all these new voting machines statewide. All our machines were computers where the voter touched the screen to indicate a choice. You put your finger on the candidate you support and, voila, that candidate gets your vote. But because there were no paper ballots, there was absolutely no way to know if the computer was delivering an honest count.
Let me tell you. It gets worse.
There were reports from voters across the state that they had pressed the button for Vince, but the machines showed Barry White as their choice.
All this was making me queasy. By the end of the night my hopes and Uncle Vince’s candidacy lay on the floor waiting for the broom and dustpan to lift them away.
* * *
The next day, political pundits of all stripes weighed in to explain the result. Some of these so-called experts suggested that ballot position was the explanation. Barry White was listed first on the ballot and that explained everything. But I researched that issue. There were serious academic studies of the effect of being first on the ballot. The effect varied, depending on how much the voters actually knew about the candidates. But even where the voters knew noth- ing, the effect was pretty small.
Then there was the “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” theory, referring to the famous song sung by the legendary R&B singer, Barry White. According to this theory, voters entering the voting booth had confused Barry White the candidate with Barry White the singer and had cast their votes to send the wrong Barry White croon- ing up I-95 to Washington, D.C., even though Barry White the singer had been dead for more than a decade.
But once you discarded these theories you faced a set of disturb- ing questions. Why were the machine counts different from the hand counts? Could these voting machines have actually been rigged?
I called a longtime political reporter at the Post, Bernadette Simpson, someone who would know about vote counting, stolen elections, and enterprises of that sort.
“Bernadette, I need your perspective. I am down here in South Carolina and there are some things about this Democratic Senate pri- mary that don’t feel right. Do you know anything about program- ming voting machines to change the count?”
“Not a thing but it would not surprise me. This country has had a pretty long history of vote fixing but not much in recent years, at least not that has been caught.”
“Enlighten me.”
“In 1960, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago voted the cemetery to help John Kennedy carry Illinois and enter the White House. In the 19th century the corrupt political machine, Tammany Hall, once voted 55,000 votes in a precinct with only 41,000 voters. Lyndon Johnson had apparently lost his 1948 race for US Senate when a box of ‘lost’ ballots suddenly appeared, giving him just enough votes to reverse the outcome. These are just a few examples.”
“But all that was 50 years ago, at least.”
“Boss Tweed didn’t have our technology. Maybe with comput- ers he could have gotten thousands more votes.”
“How easy is it to manipulate the machines? It can’t be easy, can it? I mean, if they could, then any scummy politico could…”
“Sounds like a theory, but that’s not my expertise, Lucy. I’m afraid I don’t know.”
I had a lot to learn.
In the meantime, Vince Rawlings smelled the same rat. He hired a computer expert to examine the machines. He also filed a protest with the South Carolina Democratic Committee.
* * *
I went back to Washington and went to work. The more I learned the more my stomach turned.
I talked to a computer expert who worked with voting machines. Could you program a voting machine to change the outcome of an election?
“Sure can. It takes three lines of code. Two lines adjust the vote counts any way you want.”
“What is the third line for?” I asked.
“The third line erases all three lines on election night so that if someone wanted to check the code, all evidence of the crime would be gone.”
So there it was. If you inspected the code, all evidence would be gone.
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