How votes are stolen

I have been programming computers since 1978 ( actually a bit earlier than that ) and have learned many tricks of the trade and how to make a computer do what I want it to. It is also considered to be a major programming skill to hide what is being done in computer code. This is referred to as obfuscated coding.

Because of my background in programming, I know exactly how easy it would be to modify the votes as they were being tabulated. Suppose that you wanted to make it look like everything was legitimate, you would set the voting to proceed normally all day and evening on voting day with the expectation that counting would proceed well into the night and possibly the next morning.

The easiest way to achieve the goal is through setting a special flag at a few minutes to an hour or so after midnight on the day after voting was over but while votes were being counted. The counting routine looks for that flag and if set, it would flip votes from candidate A to Candidate B. Once the flag was set, it the program could flip every tenth vote of every ninth vote throughout the counting until whatever time the flag was cleared. If necessary, it could even flip every vote. Once the flag was cleared, the vote counting would again proceed as normal. All that would be needed to pull this off is to keep observes back a distance so that they could not see the actual counts as they were posted. Then the voting machines needed to be sequestered until they could be changed back to a normal voting routine.

This is almost exactly as things happened. However, this is only one of several possible scenarios.

It should be a law that the vote processing machine print out a receipt to be returned to the voter at the time the ballot is cast. The receipt must provide a detailed report and a tracking number. The report show exactly what the voter selected on the ballot and any omissions or errors that may have occurred. The voter must then be able to have the ballot pulled and re-cast his votes if he sees a discrepancy between what the receipt showed and what the voter intended.

Those voting by mail must include a return address envelope to receive their receipt but can not change their vote once the election deadline has been reached.