Behizy’s post has attracted the attention of some who are famous in the world of voting machine conspiracies. Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who was sued for defamation by Dominion Voting over lies he spread about their machines after the 2020 election, boosted Behizy’s position. Former Trump national security adviser and election producer Michael Flynn quoted Behizy on Twitter about the hack: “Our election system is at risk from malicious actors,” Flynn wrote. “We MUST finish the machines! Total BS we continue to use.” Right-wing campaigner Phillip Buchanan, known online as Catturd, also quoted Behizy’s post, along with a poignant statement to his millions of followers: “Just imagine that!”
A clip of the successful hack—minus the main thread—also spread to mainstream news sites and forums. Right-wing commentator Vigilant Fox, who runs Vigilant News, tagged a podcast clip to their 1.3 million followers on X as “an important story” the media “hid from you today.” On TruthSocial, these stories were shared with links across sites, such as “Slay News,” and shared with “Freedom Force Battalion,” a QAnon account.
“I haven’t listened to the whole interview so far, to be fair,” one poster on Truth Social wrote, while sharing a short clip and saying that all voting machines are vulnerable.
Voting machines have long been victims of election conspiracies. But in 2020, with the help of GOP members of congress, right-wing sheriffs, conservative pundits, and Trump, that narrative exploded into the mainstream.
At the same time, officials in the US government and agencies charged with holding and protecting US elections called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”
Well-intentioned cyber security experts and hackers, like Hursti, are often tapped by federal and state agencies to probe election infrastructure for security vulnerabilities to make elections more secure. This August, like every year, hackers in DEFCON’s “voting village”—led by Hursti—identified some weaknesses in the equipment. Politico reported that while it is unlikely that any of those weaknesses could affect the election, some experts are concerned about election conspiracy watchers who are manipulating the results to advance their narrative about the system.
In the last four years, a large network of opposition parties in the national and provincial elections has been formed, built on the belief that the 2020 elections are being stolen. In recent months, the groups have kicked into gear ahead of the November vote, pushing conspiracies about immigrant voting, trying to remove thousands of names from voter rolls and even checking drop boxes in swing states.
Throughout the podcast, Bet-David repeatedly tries to refute the allegations as to why the voting machines are not secure, suggesting that the unnamed “they” are deliberately trying to keep the system insecure.
Hursti always pushes back, pointing out that computers are inherently vulnerable and that instead of trying to create a perfect system, officials are working to minimize the risk where possible.
“Every computer in the world can be hacked if you have access and don’t slow down,” Hursti said. “When we hack machines, it’s because of the intention that we can improve and if you can improve the system you have to improve everything around the system, have a mitigation strategy, how to protect the system.”
Citing the vulnerability Hursti has exposed to many voting machines in recent years, Bet-David pushed the well-known conspiracy that in 2020 “the winners were flipped because someone got into” the machines.
But the Finnish hacker pushed back, rejecting the proposal and pointing out that without proper laws in place to ensure that voting machines meet basic security standards, the idea that elections were vulnerable to cyberattacks is enough to damage democracy.
“I [worry] here is to deny the result or make false allegations,” said Hursti. “This is very dangerous because it increases public distrust and, in a democracy, any distrust is detrimental to participation and democracy is about participation. Distrust breeds indifference. Apathy is dangerous to the functioning of democracy. “
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