Newsmax loves to take little digs at voting-tech companies Dominion and Smartmatic, despite the fact that both companies are suing Newsmax over false claims it made about both companies. The apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy wrote of the former in a Jan. 23 article:
A voting systems expert testifying in a Georgia trial last week demonstrated that Dominion Voting Systems machines were so easily hackable he could use a Bic pen and smart card to copy, edit, and change votes in seconds, according to Law360 Pulse, which is covering the trial.
Professor J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan, the author of a highly publicized report detailing deficiencies in Dominion’s voting machines, testified at an Atlanta trial Thursday in a case filed in 2017 against the state of Georgia.
Halderman, who wrote a 96-page report in July 2021, began his demonstration before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg in Atlanta by asking a plaintiffs’ attorney to borrow a pen, Law360 Pulse reported.
The professor then inserted the pen into the Dominion voting machine and held it there for a few seconds, which caused the machine to reboot into “safe mode,” according to Halderman.
Halderman then explained that a person could copy or change files on the voting machine, change its operating settings, or install malware.
Halderman said accessing the “terminal emulator” could allow a user to bypass the computer’s normal security settings and obtain “super-user” access — something that allows a person to read, monitor, and change “anything,” including ballots, on the voting machine with “no limits,” Law360 Pulse reported.
“All it takes is five seconds and a Bic pen,” Halderman said.
McCarthy didn’t mention that there’s much more to Halderman’s experiment, namely that he had three months to devise this hack with full access to Dominion hardware. As a more honest media outlet reported:
The state has sought to discredit Halderman’s research, arguing that real-world security measures would prevent the kind of hacks he testified about, which he developed after having spent three months with a Fulton County election machine.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Dominion defended its machines.
“Mr. Halderman’s experiment did not happen in the real world, and he had far more than a BIC pen. Under court directive, Halderman was given all the passwords, security cards, exact election files, and more — everything he would need to try to cause trouble. He also faced none of the numerous mandated physical and operational safeguards in place during actual elections,” the spokesperson said in part. “The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has already concluded that all of Mr. Halderman’s assertions are mitigated by existing election procedures.”
Deidre Holden, the longtime supervisor of elections in Paulding County, echoed that sentiment, noting that she has poll workers supervise voter interactions with ballot-marking devices. But headlines about hacked machines fueled doubt in her work and reminded her of the elections in 2020 and 2021, when she and others received graphic, violent threats.
It wasn’t until the 19th paragraph of his article that McCarthy got around to mentioning that Dominion is suing Newsmax and others, and he seem to be sticking to talking points issued by Newsmax’s lawyers in writing about it:
After the 2020 election, Dominion claimed it was defamed by several parties, including Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, and several individuals.
In April of 2023, Fox News settled its litigation with Dominion, paying the voting firm $787 million. Dominion’s litigation against Newsmax is ongoing in Delaware court.
Newsmax has stated that it acted within the bounds of a media organization to report the public claims of President Donald Trump and his lawyers.
At the time, Newsmax also reported that Dominion had denied all claims made by Trump and his team.
During this period, Newsmax asked Dominion to appear on its network to rebut claims made by the president, but Dominion declined to do so.
“In a democracy, there can be no more issue for important public discussion than the reliability of a voting company’s technology, and the current Georgia trial underscores the fact that the vulnerability of Dominion’s voting systems, machines and methodology remain highly concerning and of ongoing public interest,” Newsmax said in a statement.
“Dominion’s lawsuit against Newsmax is nothing more than a political effort to squelch free speech and a free press,” Newsmax said.
The network also noted that Dominion’s voting systems had been controversial before the 2020 election and was even the focus of a HBO documentary called “Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections.”
The early 2020 documentary alleged that Dominion’s machines were hackable and did not offer a verifiable audit of votes.
McCarthy did not let anyone from Dominion respond to his employer’s talking points.