When it comes to computerized voting machines, there’s really only one question that we need to ask. Can they be hacked? If the answer is “No,” then we need to focus on election integrity issues that truly matter, like banning mail-in ballots. But if the answer is “Yes,” then we should also work on getting these machines banned.

The question has been asked since the questionable 2020 election whether the machines created by Dominion Voting Systems are vulnerable to hacking. We got a definitive answer last week, when a computer scientist hacked a machine in seconds in federal court and changed votes in the system.

There’s a lawsuit going on against Dominion Voting Systems in Atlanta, Georgia that actually precedes the 2020 election. A group of mostly left-leaning election integrity people filed suit back in 2018 to get rid of the voting machines in Georgia, which at the time were thought to be vulnerable to hacking. When Georgia switched to all Dominion machines for the 2020 election, those election integrity folks amended their lawsuit. So, this case has been going on for almost six years.

Obama appointee Judge Nina Totenberg is hearing the case. She describes the plaintiffs as people who are “not conspiracy theorists of any variety.” The plaintiffs argue that Georgia state election officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, are constitutionally obligated to address the vulnerabilities of these machines. Raffensperger’s state attorneys are fighting to preserve the use of these machines. The case is Curling v. Raffensperger.

The courtroom got quite the display on Friday. University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman was called by the plaintiffs to discuss his findings on the machines. Halderman was one of the authors of the so-called “Halderman Report” on the Dominion machines, in which he picked one of the vote tabulators apart and analyzed all the various ways in which the machines could be hacked to change vote totals. That report was hidden from the public under a court order for years, because it offers further proof that the 2020 election was stolen.

Halderman has three degrees in computer science from Princeton University. He does security analysis of voting precinct software in the US and other countries. He knows his stuff.

On Friday, Halderman brought a Dominion Ballot Marking device and printer up to the front of Totenberg’s courtroom. Halderman then asked to borrow a pen from Brad Raffensperger’s main attorney.

Halderman used the fountain pen to push the machine’s power button in for approximately 7 seconds. This allowed him to boot the machine into “safe mode.” Once it was in safe mode, he was able to quickly change vote totals and start moving files around on the machine.

Georgia reporter Amber Connor has been covering this trial for the past two weeks. She told the Gateway Pundit about what transpired Friday, and added this:

“So, you can actually install something that you’ve already pre-programmed, or you can program it at that point to do whatever you tell it to do. So that can be anything from, if they vote for George Washington, that it could then be recorded… or actually displayed as Benedict Arnold.”

Halderman wrote about his investigation of a Dominion ballot marking device in a blog post last week as well, stating, “We discovered vulnerabilities in nearly every part of the system that is exposed to potential attackers.”

“Our report explains how attackers could exploit the flaws we found to change votes or potentially even affect election outcomes in Georgia, including how they could defeat the technical and procedural protections the state has in place.”

Brad Raffensperger knows that these machines are vulnerable. He’s known for years. Even Gov. Brian Kemp’s office has determined that Raffensperger faked the numbers in the December 2020 audit of the stolen election. The number of votes that were counted could not be reconciled with the number of official ballots that were cast.

Raffensperger is refusing to install Dominion’s security patches that would (maybe) protect against many of the vulnerabilities that Halderman has uncovered. The solution seems simple, since everyone now knows how to hack one of them in 7 seconds with a fountain pen.

The Dominion machines must be scrapped for the 2024 election, and Georgia must switch to paper-only ballots and same-day voting and counting. Junk the machines!