A video in which it was revealed that officials from the St. Charles County Election Authority allegedly improperly cut the wires of voting machines was misunderstood, according to the director.
“We apologize if our wording in the public meeting caused any confusion or concern,” Kurt Bahr told the St. Louis Record.
Bahr, director of the St. Charles County Election Authority, was reacting to demands by the conservative group, Freedom Principal MO, that Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft investigate him and Deputy Director Mark Parkinson.
It is illegal to tamper with e-voting machines under Section 115.633 of the Missouri statutes.
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, the video in question was recorded during a breakfast meeting that was part of the March 2023 St. Charles Townhall Meeting organized by St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil.
But Bahr denied there is any evidence of wrongdoing in the video and blamed the uproar on a misunderstanding of words.
"We apologize if our wording in the public meeting caused any confusion or concern," he said. “During a public meeting in March of 2023, the Election Authority stated that we “cut” the wires to the ethernet cord in our scantron ballot counting devices known as the OpenElect Voting Optical (OVO). This euphemism led to some confusion."
Bahr explained that voting machines are equipped to connect to a closed network for system upgrades, not the Internet.
“Neither the OVO nor any of the OpenElect product line has ever been or can ever be connected to the internet,” he said. “The, now disconnected, Cat 5 ethernet cable was used solely for software and firmware upgrades via a closed network using an EAS 256-bit encrypted trusted source.”
The election integrity organization, Cause of America MO, had raised concerns about whether the opening of the voting machines and damaging of wires had voided the warranties, if prior elections were compromised before the wires were cut, and whether the Voting System Test Lab (VSTL) certification had been nullified.
However, Bahr said in his rebuttal that it was the manufacturer’s qualified technicians who internally disconnected the Cat 5 ethernet cable from the RJ45 port on the motherboard from Jan. 26 through Jan. 28 in 2021 while performing a software update to the OVOs.
“By cutting this connection the external RJ45 port was rendered inoperable,” he said. “These additional security measures ensure that a malicious actor cannot hack our OVOs by physically inserting a Cat 5 cable into the ethernet port, however, if left intact, connection via an untrusted source would still be unattainable.”
Bahr added that there had been no unintended damage or adverse consequence to the OVOs by the manufacturer’s qualified technicians.
“In November 2021, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) accredited the VSTL,” he said. “Pro V & V conducted a wireless communication test on the OVO and the entire voting system employed by the St. Charles County Election Authority. Pro V & V concluded that there was no evidence of transmission for intended or unintended communication, which was found to be true of all components of the OpenElect suite of products.”