Reuters Claims Office of DNI Investigated Puerto Rico Election Machines For “Claims That Venezuela Had Hacked Voting Machines” in the U.S. Territory
In June of 2024, Puerto Rico encountered numerous problems while conducting their primary elections. The Gateway Pundit reported that vote counts were reported as lower than the paper counts. Some voting systems reversed totals, while some reported zero votes for certain candidates. The discrepancies were attributed to a “software issue,” according to the Puerto Rico Election Commission’s interim president at the time, Jessika Padilla-Rivera.
There wasn’t much reporting on the American territory and the problems they had surrounding that election. However, it did cause the election commission in the territory to call into question its contract with Dominion Voting Systems prior to the November 2024 election.
In an “exclusive” story published on Wednesday, Reuters claimed that a team working for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard “led an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines,” according to Gabbard’s office and three sources familiar with the previously unreported events.
Reuters reported:
The sources said the goal was to work with the FBI to investigate claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico, but added the probe did not produce any clear evidence of Venezuelan interference in the U.S. territory’s elections. Reuters first reported the investigation.
Gabbard’s office, in a statement to Reuters, confirmed the May investigation but denied a link to Venezuela, saying its focus was on vulnerabilities in the island’s electronic voting systems. Her team took an unspecified number of Puerto Rico’s voting machines and additional copies of data from the machines as part of its investigation, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
A source with direct knowledge of the investigation confirmed that the event in May did happen, but it was not tied to any specific claim of Venezuelan interference, nor was the scope of the investigation specific to foreign interference. However, there was evidence of foreign involvement discovered, but no country was pointed out specifically by our source.
Further, authorities in Puerto Rico requested the investigation into the voting systems in the American territory following the “software issues” from the previous elections.
Our source did confirm that “ODNI found extremely concerning cyber security and operational deployment practices that pose a significant risk to U.S. elections,” however, that can be said for most black box voting systems with proprietary software and source code.
For example, Dominion Voting Systems were found to have their login passwords hardcoded in plain text on the software. Georgians made t-shirts with “dvscorp08!”. The User login “SAdmin” was available as well. This was initially uncovered by Cyber Ninjas during their Maricopa County audit in 2021 and was later discovered in four Georgia counties and two other states by Philip Davis.
In 2007, the California Secretary of State withdrew approval of Sequoia Voting Systems for the same issue: hardcoded passwords in plaintext within the software.
DNI Gabbard has been the subject of recent attacks by the Mockingbird Media regarding her involvement in Fulton County and an alleged whistleblower complaint. The Inspector General for the Intelligence Community has said that the alleged whistleblower complaints did not appear credible. Despite the IGIC’s claims, Congress has shown concern about the DNI not reporting the matter to the appropriate committee. DNI Gabbard pointed out in a letter posted to X that she is not required to report to Congress on claims deemed non-credible.
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