Complaint: Secretary of State’s Office Illegally Meddles in County Elections Before and After They Are Certified and Then Covers it Up

Since early 2023, the Estancia News has been covering the fact that New Mexico’s elections are being processed illegally on uncertified, internet-connected software called SERVIS. SERVIS is not certified by the Election Assistance Commission, making it illegal to use for election management according to state and federal law.

Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver has been put on notice that she is using illegal software and that it has been proven to be subverted, but she has failed to change her processes to bring them into compliance with the law and protect New Mexico’s elections.

Complaints containing evidence that the Secretary of State has full access to county-level election results and meddles with it during and after certification were recently filed with the New Mexico Attorney General and State Ethics Commission.

PROOF NEW MEXICO ELECTIONS ARE BEING PROCESSED ILLEGALLY

The complaints filed in August stem from the discovery of a series of internal emails between the SOS’s office and the Torrance and Roosevelt County Clerks that were obtained by a citizen.

The complaint submitted under penalty of perjury states:

“In violation of NMSA 10-16-3: The New Mexico Office of the Secretary of State materially interfered in the 2022 Torrance and Roosevelt Counties General Election Canvasses, during which the Secretary of State at the time was candidate and had direct interest in its outcome. In violation of NMSA 1-13-1, Kari Fresquez, contractor for the NMSOS, participated in preparing the Torrance County Canvass, as well as in altering the already certified Roosevelt County Canvass prior to its final submission to the NMSOS.”

The complaint also alleges that the SOS’s office withheld requested internal emails between Kari Fresquez and the county clerks that revealed official election records were being accessed and changed online through SERVIS before and after they had been certified by the counties. Withholding requested public records is a violation of the law. The emails were eventually obtained directly from the counties.

The emails attached to the complaints reveal email conversations between Kari Fresquez at the Secretary of State’s office and Torrance County Chief Deputy Clerk Sylvia Chavez, and Roosevelt County Clerk Mandi Park.

The emails between Torrance Chief Deputy Clerk Chavez and Kari Fresquez are dated November 16th, 2022, the day before the County Commission, acting in their capacity as County Board of Canvass, certified the midterm election. From the emails it is clear that both Fresquez and Chavez were accessing the final election results online to create the official election canvass documents that would be approved by the County Commission. In fact, Chavez had to request Fresquez “unlock” her results so she could edit her own county’s canvass documents prior to certification.

New Mexico state statutes do not give the Secretary of State any authority to access or edit official county election results before they are approved by the County Commission.

Torrance County’s election was certified by the County Commission the day after Fresquez had accessed and directed changes to the results. The minutes for the County Commission meeting record numerous public comments expressing concerns about the conduct of the election and the election system.

Proof the SOS’s office is meddling with official election results prior to the County Commission releasing the certified results is bad enough, but the email correspondence between Fresquez and Roosevelt Clerk Park shows that Fresquez and Park were both accessing and editing the official election results after the Roosevelt County Commission had already certified them.

According to public records, the Roosevelt County election was certified by the County Commission on November 15th, 2022. The emails exchanged between Fresquez and Park are dated November 16th through November 22nd and discuss the necessity to retrieve ballots for review and changes being made to the canvass documentation up through November 22nd.

Very similar emails detailing changes being made to Sandoval County election results after county certification were also obtained by the Estancia News. These changes appear to have included opening ballot boxes and revising tabulator tapes:

These emails support our previous reporting that statewide official election results are being processed online, multiple parties have access to them, and the Secretary of State is not respecting the statutory authority of counties to independently conduct and certify their own elections without interference from the SOS’s office.

Toulouse Oliver has a webpage called “How We Secure Your Vote” where she gaslights the New Mexican people with disinformation meant to dazzle the uniformed into believing their elections are secure. Many of statements made on this page are misleading, but possibly the worst are under the section called “Air – Gapped Counting Systems”:

• “Systems that count votes, aka tabulators, are prevented by law and process from being joined to a computer network or the Internet”.
• “Systems that sum votes at the county level are prevented by law and process from being joined to a computer network or the Internet.”

It is arguable whether the first statement claiming that the tabulators which receive voters’ ballots are never connected to the internet is true since every one of them has an internal modem which could be surreptitiously turned on and accessed by a determined hacker, but the real whopper is in the second statement: “systems that sum votes at the county level are prevented by law and process from being joined to a computer network or the Internet.” This is obviously a false statement as demonstrated by the emails between Fresquez and the clerks.

The internet-connected software used by the county clerks to process the final election results using the data collected by the tabulators is called SERVIS – which is a state-specific version of software called TotalVote. By using the online software TotalVote/SERVIS to process the final election results and create the canvass documents, the entire election is actually exposed to the internet because TotalVote/SERVIS also hosts the registration database, absentee ballot request records, and election night reporting.

The obvious problem with having almost everything having to do with an election on one piece of internet-connected software is that it is inherently vulnerable to hacking. If a bad actor wanted to alter election results, he would have access to everything he needed to carry out a fraudulent election and cover it up by making all the other electronic records match his cheat.

WHAT IS SERVIS?

As stated, SERVIS is a state-specific version of a software called TotalVote, created by a company called BPro – a company with foreign connections and a shady past that was purchased by another company called KNOWiNK in 2020.

Just the name “TotalVote” should raise alarm bells for every citizen who wants honest elections. TotalVote claims to be a:

“centralized voter registration and election management system that securely captures and manages voter, candidate and all election information. It is the only software system that encompasses the entire election process into one system. Rather than transferring data from system to system and dealing with compatibility issues, election officials are able to log into one system and work on any aspect of the election process.”

Maybe having everything to do with an election housed on a single, internet-connected software sounds great to an election official who knows nothing about cyber-security or audit trails, and is looking for convenience, but it opens massive numbers of opportunities for election subversion at a grand scale.

Because TotalVote/SERVIS touches every part of the election, a bad actor could not only manipulate the election results if they wanted to, but they could also re-write the audit trail to make sure all the electronic election records matched the subverted results, and no one would be the wiser.

KARI FRESQUEZ AND HER ROLE IN EXPOSING NEW MEXICO’S ENTIRE ELECTION SYSTEM TO THE INTERNET

A little research into Kari Fresquez reveals that she has a background in information technologies and has been involved at the New Mexico Secretary of State’s office since 2011. She was working at the Secretary of State’s office when Diana Duran, the last Republican to hold the office, resigned after pleading guilty to mishandling campaign donations in December of 2015.

Earlier in 2015, Duran had signed a contract with a company called BPro to perform a limited project to create a custom software interface called IRIS (Integrated Reporting and Integrity System) to “integrate with an election night reporting system and canvassing system, so that vote totals can be obtained for each precinct from each voting system tabulator within a voting convenience center.” The contract under Duran was only worth $60,000.

Within 60 days of Duran’s resignation, and under the urging of Kari Fresquez, the contract with BPro for the development of IRIS was tripled and New Mexico was off to the races in getting almost the entire election system online under a single piece of software. IRIS was later remanded SERVIS, which is TotalVote.

It turns out that Fresquez considers this evolution of New Mexico’s elections one of the crowning achievements of her career as it was her central talking point for her bio on her advisory board position at the National Association of Voting Officials (NAVO).

Fresquez’s bio states:

“Her experience in supporting business needs with her technology-focused education and experience lends well toward efforts in modernizing and automating the computer systems and processes supporting statewide elections in New Mexico. Kari successfully led the SOS Integrated Reporting and Integrity System (IRIS) project which allowed centralized, statewide candidate filing, result reporting, and result canvassing efforts for the 2014 primary and general elections.”

The 2014 primary and general elections took place a year before Diana Duran signed the contract with BPro, bringing into question how the IRIS software could have been used before Duran had approved it and who was really running the SOS’s office under Duran’s tenure.

NAVO, where Fresquez was an advisory board member, no longer appears to be an active organization, but they were founded in 2013 to advocate moving elections from the current systems into a completely online system where votes could be cast from a smartphone app. This terrifying proposition was detailed on a YouTube video shared by NAVO. Despite there being absolutely no way to trust or audit such a system, NAVO believes that making the source code “open source” will prevent tampering.

E-voting has also been advocated for by the World Economic Forum, who’s leader Klaus Schwab is now foreseeing a day in the future where elections will no longer be needed because AI will be able to accurately predict the winner of elections without having to go through the motions.

Fresquez was the State Elections Director in 2016 when New Mexico entered into a contract with ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center). ERIC is the organization behind the SOS’s most recent scandal where she used data provided by ERIC to invite illegal immigrants to register to vote.

TAKING BACK OUR ELECTIONS

Knowing people like Fresquez have had a huge, behind-the-scenes’ influence on the trajectory of New Mexico’s elections for over a decade and that she was part of an organization created to push the country into completely electronic, online voting is a sobering revelation.

But the fact remains that state and federal law, for now, do not allow final election results to be processed on an uncertified, online software as is currently being done. And state statues do not allow for the SOS to meddle with county official election results – that is the sole duty of the county clerk and the county commission.

It is imperative that we, as citizens, force our clerks and county commissions to understand the law as it is written and to band together to demand that the law be followed. The use of TotalVote/SERVIS for processing the election results is not legal and is opening massive vulnerabilities into our elections.