Interview with Darius Englen - County Clerk Candidate | Season 2, Episode 26

 Part 3 of our 3 part candidate series. 

See the video interview here : https://youtu.be/SVnl2DBvkew

I sit down with Darius Englen, candidate for Josephine County Clerk. Darius brings over 30 years of experience in IT, data systems, and network security, along with a background in the U.S. Navy and private sector consulting. 

We talk about why he decided to run and what he believes needs to change inside the clerk’s office. In this interview we get into election integrity, how the current system works in Oregon, and where he sees potential weaknesses in chain of custody, data handling, and overall security. He shares his perspective on vote by mail, accountability, and what changes he would push for if elected. We also talk about his work as a legislative assistant, his focus on customer service, and what it means to serve the public at the county level. This is a detailed conversation about elections, trust in the system, and the role of the County Clerk. Watch the full interview and decide for yourself. 

#grantspass #josephinecounty #oregon #southernoregon #localpolitics #countyclerk #election2026 #dariusenglen #jocorepublicanpodcast #community #publicservice #vote 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Part three of my three-part series. So we're going to interview Darius Englin or Josephine County Clerk. Let's get into it. I got Darius Englin here with me, and you are running for a county clerk. That's right. So uh what made you decide to run for county clerk?

SPEAKER_00 0:22

So, really, uh when uh February came around and I realized we've got to do something in this in this county, I I really want to try to help fix up that clerk's office. There's something going on, everybody knows it across the country, it's not just the county, yeah, it's across the country. That uh elections, especially, right? Primarily elections, we really need to uh investigate our current system and see is it truly viable? Yeah. Because we've been using it now here in Oregon for over 27 years. I thought it was 40 years. No, no, it was 1998, was the first year, I believe. We should double triple check that. But I believe that was the first year that we um ran the all mail-in voting here in Oregon. Okay. So the law I think was passed in 97 or 96 uh, I'm sorry, 95 or 96, and then it got implemented. I think 98 was the first election. But and and uh I had just come back from the the US Navy at that time. We just my wife and I um I resigned my commission in the Navy, came back in '96. And I remember that election, that next election, was the last time that I voted in person on paper.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

So you before you had to go to the voting booth and show your ID. Yeah. Right. You would, and those were where? Where were those located?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So um, well, let's get back to that in just a second. So I wanted to say something more about why I was running for clerk. So um I've been an IT guy for over 30 years. So I've been in IT security, data security, data systems, network security, system security, network administration. And uh when I visited the clerk's office in the past couple years, having other issues that were going on, and I went over to visit and asked questions, yeah. Um, I discovered very quickly that um there's a lack of knowledge of the security or or of data security. And I wouldn't say it's due to uh negligence. I I wouldn't say that about the current clerk, but it's just that experience and understanding of technical systems, how data flows technically, where it goes, where it could go, how networks can be infiltrated, how simple it is, how easy it is, how common it is, all of that was missing. And it was missing, I think, again, just because a lot of clerks, I would say most of probably the majority of clerks by far, have not been IT professionals. Yeah, you know, they're not data security analysts, they're not systems analysts, they're not engineers, they're not systems engineers. And that's my background. You know, after I got out of the US Navy um in 1996, then I did consulting um and various other IT. I was IT director for a couple different companies and did consulting for small and medium-sized businesses, about 200 of them here in the Rogue Valley uh during their during those 30 years. And that really gets that really gave me uh a perspective on the potential for disaster in our elections across the country, but here in Josephine County. So that that's a big part of why uh I want to get in there to be clerk. But another reason is because I love customer service, I love helping people. Uh I've almost always had a job where I was in service. In fact, I think every single one of my jobs has been a service job when you know when I look back, you know, and uh customer service, making people um pleased with whatever service that is is a huge um talent of mine, ability, because I can serve I I like to serve. So I think that encapsulates the most part, encapsulates it for the most part why uh I want to get in there and help fix up the clerk's office. So more secure.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

I I know Rihanna, she just basically keeps the the votes in a in a locked, she has a thumb drive, right, and she puts it into a locked cabinet. But you're thinking more of like a two-factor authentication where there's two people, like in the Navy, you'd have two people that had the the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Right, and one can't do it alone. One can't do it alone, right? That's a big part of it. I mentioned that in a forum recently about two-person integrity, TPI, is what the Navy tagged that with. And and uh I think that's important. And when she when when the clerk mentions that um I'm the only one with the key, I'm the only one with the access, and I'm the one that goes and gets the ballots, and I'm I'm thinking, wow, those are all actually failure points right in a system when you analyze it from the outside. You can't look at the character of the person, believe it or not. When you analyze the system, you don't look at the person, right? You have to look at the system. So you look to see, hey, we don't know that person. Yeah. You know, so you have to look at it without looking at the person. And you say, what is a good way to do this? You know, what is the the safest way to do this? So yeah. What are we gonna get back to?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Well, I didn't want to cut you off, but you know I I was asking, I think, but you know, what what what's your wife think about you running for clerk? I mean, it it's gonna take you away from your family. I mean, that's kind of a full-time job over there, right? Um, maybe even more than full-time, you know, it's 40, 60 hours a week, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Uh yeah, so my wife is is behind me, I think, far more than I thought she was gonna be. Because running for office, that that would be the touchy part. Yeah, working in the in uh for the county and working in the clerk's office, she my wife's happy about that. One because it's local, I'm not out at sea somewhere, like in the Navy, even I'd be gone for six months and you'll go going around the world. And uh, or not like in Salem, uh, because working for the legislative assistant job that I have right now.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Okay, so you're legislative assistant for Senator Robinson. Right, right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Currently, yeah, since uh um January 2025, I've been working for Senator Robinson as his uh legislative assistant. So I had to be in Salem in 2025 for six months solid. Wow. You know, I mean I came back for the weekend, but I mean I had my RV and was was living in the RV up there in Silverton and and going to Salem every day. Um and and she so she's happy about me being in town. Should be local, yeah. Yeah, and but but I work for the senator here in town too, you know, across the street from the courthouse. So uh when when the legislature's not in session. So um would you keep this job?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

I mean, would you have to would you have to give up your job as a oh yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Oh yeah, because that's a full-time job and and the clerk's a full-time job. I see. So yeah, no, I I I would unfortunately have to leave Senator Robinson's service, uh and and he's aware of that. He's probably rooting for me not to be clerk. I don't know. Um you know, he's let me know that I do a great job for him, but yep, but uh yeah, no, my wife, my wife's in favor of me, of me doing this. So we know it's stepping out. We have an incumbent that we're going against. She's been in there over 20 years, so she's been uh she's yeah, she's been in that office, and um that's not easy, you know, taking out an incumbent, and it could be just it all feels like a waste if you lose, right? You put money, time, effort, sweat equity, and lack of sleep. You put all that into a campaign and then you lose. So there's that, and she's she's concerned about that too, a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

So, Darius, um, election integrity, well, what what are your thoughts on that? And I know that there's a lot of people out there that are saying oh the election system is fine, and they're saying there's nothing wrong with it, or it's a.0058 um chance of having mishaps or whatever. Right. What are your thoughts on that? And and here locally, 98, what do we have, 90, 98,000 voters?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Uh no, no, 70, 72. 72, 71 something registered voters.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

And so, like election integrity within Josephine County, I mean, I get the grand picture that the you know you have thoughts on that, the grand picture of but what about election integrity in Josephine County and how do you want to fix that?

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Right. So it obviously it's a huge topic. Like I mentioned, it's one of the main reasons why I want to try to get in and help with the in the clerk's office. And it and it is, I mean, it's it's not just that I have an inordinate focus on that, it's that the whole country has a focus on election security or election integrity.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Depending on who's winning or losing.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

It does. That's right. Yeah, that's right. So I've been to two forums recently, and I think I might have told you about this off camera uh sometime in the past, but both those forums, when I mentioned that I'm in favor of the movement to end vote by mail, there were audible gasps from the room. Right so so they were both what we can fairly say were liberal audiences. For sure. And um, you know, both times is that 45 people in one, and maybe maybe there might have been close to about the same. So both both times the rooms had about 40-some people in it, and and it was audible to hear that they were shocked that I was in favor of uh ending vote by mail. So I I really feel like if you were to draw a diagram, and it had I had I known that this was kind of impromptu, so I I didn't bring a chart or anything, but but we could actually put together a chart, and I can kind of envision this chart that would show the ballot um uh the continuation or the movement from a ballot. And actually, right before the ballot is also very important with mail-in voting. So, in a normal voting situation, not like we have here in Josephine County in in Oregon, the ballot is really somewhat insignificant until someone signs in for it, and then it becomes their ballot. So they go into a voting, that's what it was. You asked me about going into the voting center and what was that like, you know, and that's what I think. Yeah, what happened before, yeah. What happened before, right? So so we can tie that in right here. So um, so you you would walk in and you would show an ID or not, because you didn't always have to show an ID, but uh typically they they'd want to see you are who you say you are, and you they'd they'd have the voter rolls on a large printout. Usually they've the old uh tractor feed green bar paper, it was called report paper. Wow, yeah, that's typically what they had for decades. They have matrix yeah, the matrix printer, exactly, exactly. They're called line printers because they print the whole line at once, right? So, but anyway, they have those, and the election worker would be there, volunteer would be there, look up your name on that report. You know, there might be a hundred names, you know, per stack that they have, alphabetical order, and uh they would find your name, and then there's a place over to the right where you sign. And so you sign your name and they look at that, and they have the signature cards right there in little three by five cards. So they actually have a copy of your signature, and they confirm, yep, and they look at hopefully look at your ID. Yep, that's you. They take a ballot, a fresh ballot, out of their box of ballots there, and they issue you that ballot. So now you have a ballot, doesn't have your name on it or anything, doesn't, you know, doesn't have any, it's just the ballot. Right. And so then you take that over to the booth and you fill it out, and you come back, and when you go to check out, you have to check out who you are. So they have another place at the outdoor, yeah, and you sign out. Wow, same thing on right your name, and you sign out, your ballot goes into a clear box, and that's it. It's a clear locked box sitting there with two people watching it. And that has that ballot from the time it was blank and went into your hand, it didn't leave your hand until you came back after it was filled out, and you put it in a clear box, and then the two people or more that are assigned to watching that box, that ballot doesn't have a chance to be stolen, right, overwritten, lost, anything. Okay. And then later that night, when the end of that shift, which is only one day, by the way, it's one day voting. The uh a group of people, five, six people that are signed up, you know, to do the voting, they the ballot counting, they actually take the ballots out and they literally hand count those ballots on tally sheets, and there'd be three people counting the same ballot. So they have three people integrity, like we talked about earlier, two-person integrity, you have like three people, four people integrity. Because you actually, all at once, you count the ballots together, you pass them down one after the next, you know, you wait till the guy's done, you have to everybody has to wait for everybody, but so you don't you don't do piles, everybody has to stay together, and and you do all that's how you tally that. That's one of the ways. There's several, but but that integrity, that that that ballot integrity, and they call it chain of custody. So you have chain of custody from the empty ballot to the voter back into that box. That chain of custody, there's nowhere for it to break. You count it right there. Look at what we have in Oregon. There's a central database that the Secretary of State keeps track of all of the registered voters. Is that Eric? Eric is used to be supposedly the third-party company that helps maintain the cleanliness of the roles. They're the ones who have been shown to be failing. Right. Majorly failing.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

People have fired Eric. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Yeah, several counties have fired Eric.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

What does the Eric stand for? It was elect I'll put that on the screen below. Yeah. Eric's uh stand for it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah, but it had to do with the consistency of the data. And they they were supposed to be uh doing that. But they they've they've done a terrible job in several states. It's been documented, so I'm not I'm not throwing any slanderer around, right? Sure. It's been proven, right, and then they've lost cases and they've been fired. So um, so uh, or let's just say it this way: their contracts weren't renewed. Right, right. Okay. So um, so first of all, there's a there's a centralized database. Now, how that data gets into that database is a problem. That data can come from a clerk's office. So someone can come in, fill out a registration to vote, hand it in to the clerk physically, across the counter, clerk has it, clerk can enter it into that database remotely. It's like that database is housed in the state cloud, you know, run by the Secretary of State, whoever they hired. I don't know if that's internal or uh Oregon state, uh state of Oregon IT or not, by the way. Yeah, uh it very well could be. I visited the center in Salem, the IT data center that's in Salem. I visited that, and they didn't tell us all the clients in the government that use it, but they but they that's growing. Their internal usage is growing because not everything in this, all the state departments use that IT center, and and I don't know that the Secretary of State does. I think it does. Um he does, Tobias Reed does, but I don't know that. So anyway, um so that central uh database has that input from the clerk's office, the DMV system, uh, because the DMV with motor-voter law that passed so many decades ago, um, and Oregon's implemented that fewer decades ago, but um the DMV's taking voter now voter days voter database entries and sending them up to the Secretary of State. And then uh the Secretary of State has a website, OregonVotes.gov, where you can sign up to vote. By the way, if you go look at that, that's another big hole. So I'm talking about problems, right? Because you asked me about problems here in Josephine County. Well, problems here in Josephine County come from the whole state, right? All the the DMVs, any DMV anywhere, really, it's not just Josephine County DMV, not just the one over there, you know, on Beacon, but also uh the Secretary of State system. So if you go to that website, like I was saying, organvotes.gov, you you can register to vote very simply with just a couple pieces of information. And there's no the the important thing is, oh, people love it, oh, it should be simple to vote. I mean, it should be simple to register to vote. I I totally agree. It should be simple to register to vote. But what it shouldn't be is insecure. Yeah. And it is insecure because if you look at it, you don't have to validate who you are filling out that form on the screen. No, you don't. It doesn't ask you for like a utility bill to show where you live or social security number. Or you can ask you for your social security number, or even the last four of your social security number. It doesn't ask you for that. And you need a birth date, a first and last name, and an address that you can put down. Off you go. And yeah, boom, I'm you're registered. So, I mean, if you think about it too, people could do that from anywhere in the world. Right. I mean, literally, other states, other countries, other nations, you know, I mean, other continents. So that's a big problem for the clerk in Josephine County, because the clerk in Josephine County is relying on that database to be legitimate for anybody in the jurisdiction of Josephine County. So that that's where the problem starts.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

So, but then the Secretary of State has to um manage that database and have security over that database. The clerk does not. That's a problem. Because the clerk, if you look at the clerk's duty and responsibilities that the clerk is elected to do, one of them, and it's a big one, and and just generically, it's to maintain a voting system that is legitimate.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

So manage, watch over it, operate it, but it's the clerk's duty. Believe it or not, it's not actually the Secretary of State's duty. It's the clerk's date. It's the clerk's duty. So each clerk, we have 36 counties in Oregon, and each clerk has the authority and the responsibility for that election. The Secretary of State as as the function of the state government is required to have oversight as part of even from the Constitution that says that the states will and have the duty to run elections. Yeah. They and and so the state that's where it's held, is in the Secretary of State's office. So but the but that responsibility, or you know what it's like to have a responsibility for something but not the authority.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

That breaks. So, like in management training 101, if you're setting up a company and you want to have a good department, just as like a department, right? The clerk's office is like a department within the government. You need to give that supervisor or manager or department head, you need to give them both responsibility for it and authority. Because if they don't have the authority to be responsible, it'll break. Yeah, not only will you have dysfunction, you'll have a bad system that accountability doesn't happen because they don't have the authority, they the authority comes from somewhere else, that and so they can always blame that. It's just it's broken. So you need to have both. And with Oregon's system and vote by mail, and already the brokenness that I've mentioned, uh it it falls it falls flat. And so that that's the very start of the problem. So then you have the Secretary of State when it's time to conduct an election, like right now, right? The ballots were uh received, most of them here in Josephine County were received yesterday. Right. There might be some receiving them today, I would imagine. But those come from the clerk's office. They are um especially printed, and the clerk signs off for those, picks them up from the printer. She explained that actually the other day. I thought that was interesting. That was one of those cases where she alone has the key for it and opens the box and stuff. So um, but those are printed uh here locally, but the voters' pamphlet is printed by the Secretary of State, so there's some cooperation there, and that's okay. There's that's secure and that's fine. But now those ballots, where do those addresses come from? These got mailed out to 71,000 voters here in Josephine County. The addresses come from that Secretary of State database. Yep. And those addresses are printed on those envelopes. So whatever was in that Secretary of State system, from all the various ways that people can make entries into that system, they have an envelope printed for them and a ballot for that precinct, right? It's down to the precinct level that each ballot, because there I don't know people understand, but there's like I don't know this election, but there can be like 47 different ballots. And I think if there if there's a precinct committee person running for the Democrat or the Republican Party in every one of those 47 precincts, then there that would itself demand that there's 47 different ballots that go out.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

That's a lot, that's a lot of resources.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah, it's a lot of resource, a lot of management, and all that, but all that comes from that data set that comes from the Secretary of State's office. And again, the clerk's like, oh, I just deal, you know, because the clerk's like hands off for all that, which they shouldn't be, in my opinion. Yeah, um, they just say, hey, I just deal with whatever data comes from the Secretary of State's office. Just trust it. Yeah. Yeah. And and those ballots just go out, right? The clerk doesn't have it's too late, really, for the clerk to say, Hey, is this a valid ballot? Like, I don't, I don't. Know that this ballot really should be printed. It's too late for that. The database says, hey, these are all valid voters, and the way the system's set up, those are all valid voters. And she doesn't have, or he, the clerk, doesn't have the ability to say, that's not a valid, invalid voter voter. Yeah, they can't do that. So that's broken. Because garbage in, garbage out, right? Garbage in equals garbage out. Or you, you know, that whole thing from data, data management, and people know that from doing data entry. If you put garbage in, the system's not going to fix it and make it better.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

No.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

It's just garbage comes up. So you get all of these ballots mailed out. Clerks kind of like, hey, it's not my job, you know, and then they start coming back in. Who knows? Okay, so here's some more holes. It goes into the mail. So now that remember that we talked about the people sign in for their ballot. Right, right. And they carry their ballot.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

And then they fill it out and they carry it back and they put it in the clear plastic locked box. That ballot chain of custody is visible. You know, you can't, it can't go wrong. I mean, you literally have to like make a paper airplane and throw it in the trash or, you know, something between that desk and coming back, right? So uh, but now coming back to reality here in Oregon, mail-in voting, the ballot is going to go into the mail system. Yeah. It's sitting in bins and bins and bins. 71,000 ballots are in all these bins, and people are walking by. People, they're not, are they always locked up all the time? Two-person integrity? Probably not. Maybe even one-person integrity. Like, I think they're probably left alone. Sure. You know, they're not supervised. And and they're heading out. Um, they start getting through the mail system. You know, they go through machines. Do they make it through all machines? Do they get ripped? Do they get shredded? Um can somebody along the line take one or two? Who would know? Yeah. Right? Then they go into a I'm skipping a bunch of steps. They have to get processed, they have to get sorted, they go into bins, they go into trucks, you know, somebody's hauling around in trucks, a guy's having lunch, you know, whatever. I mean, just name it. So they're they're going out, they're trying to get all those ballots out to all the mailboxes. You got mail carriers, you got um mail carrier bags, uh, boxes, are they again, are they always being watched? Are they uh here's the other thing is that ballots could be inserted from somewhere else. Right, sure. You know what I'm saying? Because they're on there if you can get a ballot into the chain, right? A broken chain, I call it a broken chain of custody. Yeah, but if you can get a new ballot brought in from XYZ, any bad customer. It'd be easy to do.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Yeah, it'd be easy to do.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Yeah, it wouldn't it wouldn't be hard to do to make a ballot. You the ballots are especially once some people have them in their hand and they have like a genuine ballot, it could be copied a different way. I don't know if you sophisticated a printer, whatever. They're not serialized, right? You know, interesting. So um, so you have ballots going out there all over the countryside, and um, then you put them in a mailbox. There's all kinds of different mail situations. There's mail slots, you know, indoors, there's there's mail boxes, there's uh uh, of course, post office boxes, um, people have access to group boxes and apartments and things like that, where they open a big door and they have different slots. I mean, so there's all kinds of different ways that a ballot now, again, without two-person integrity or even integrity, nobody's watching them. Yep, some other bad actor has opportunities to either take ballots, insert ballots, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Um ballot stuffing, essentially, it was the old old methods.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Well, you if yeah, to collect ballots, you can take them and then you can fill them all out and put them all in, right? Yeah, wow. So, so yeah, it goes on. But but right, so even when somebody picks up the mail, they could lose it on the way home before they fill it out, they leave it on the table, it can get lost, whatever, kids can mess with it, you know, dogs, pets, yeah, whatever. It's like the ballots in our system, the ballots just don't matter, and security on the ballots don't matter. There's so many holes, and so people fill them out, they go to put them back, they they go to return them, they drop them in boxes that aren't watched out in Murphy, over in Merlin, you know, anywhere. Yeah, these places, there's nobody there watching those, and and they could be putting again, you can always insert more. You can make, you know, somehow again counterfeit ballots. Is it possible? I think so. Um, but again, you don't have the integrity that all these other states do, by the way. All these other states are taught, they do it like that system I was explaining, or they do electronic, yeah, right? A lot of them are electronic, but still, there's here's your ballot, go fill it out, put it put it through a scanner. A lot of them are paper, and then they scan them in at the end after they fill them out, and there's all these other methods, but but mail-in voting has this constant broken chain. I mean, it's not even a chain anymore, it's just a broken piece. That would be a good I was gonna say, you know, have like a chart or a diagram of all the holes involved with uh mail-in uh voting. Yeah, it would look like just a broken uh bunch of pieces of bunch of leaks of links of chains, yeah. A bunch of links and and no no pieces connected to another, right? Wow. So um, yeah, and then you know, when they get the ballots back at the one of the things I witnessed this firsthand, this is maybe maybe good for people to know. So we were in here a couple elections ago in the Republican headquarters office here in Grants Pass, and this guy came in, no, actually, it was a young lady, and then later a guy, they came in the door, it was 7:30 at night on election night, and they said, Hey, there's this guy getting into the ballot box across the street at the courthouse. Yeah. I he totally looked shady. I think you guys should go check it out. So myself and Matt Morsa got up and and we went over there and we're like, oh man, what are we gonna find? You know, and we go over there, and there are two guys kind of down behind the box there, and and they had it open. They had the slot box, the uh ballot box thing open, and they were putting ballots into their bag. And we said, Hey guys, hey, what's going on? You know, we just kind of confronted them, and they were like, Oh, hey, and we're like, Well, so what are you guys doing? Oh, we're picking up the ballots. We're like, Well, um, are you supposed to be doing that? They said, Oh yeah, we work for the clerk's office, and it's getting right here at the end of the day, and we grab them every day. And we said, Well, do you have some kind of ID or something? They were just like plain clothes, Joe Blow, yeah, not in uniform, no badge, no ID. Um, they said, I s I think it was Matt, I think, hey, do you guys can we see some kind of identification that you're from the clerk's office? They're like, uh no. I mean, I got my driver's license, but I don't we don't really have like an ID. Wow. And so we were like, how shady is this? Yeah, you know, and we're like, how do we know you guys are legit? And we're like, well, I mean, we're in that we're in that county vehicle over there. And so they had a you know, a pickup, I think it was a van or a pickup county, you know, vehicle. We're like, uh, so we kind of hung out with those guys and they finished opening. They had they had something like a clipboard, they wrote something, uh, you know, numbers or count of some kind. It looked like I don't quite remember. But they were doing something, kind of busy work, and then we we kind of watched them and they got back, you know, in the county vehicle and stuff, and we're like, I don't know, this just seemed really weird, you know. And and plus it was 7:30, and our thought was, well, it closes at 8. So shouldn't they have actually been here like after 8 or at 8? So that was really weird. Anyway, there was just that that's a big fat hole. Yeah, and if the fact that these guys don't look like they're clerk employees or anything, and and they could, what if they weren't? And they broke into the box, and now they're stealing whatever, 600 ballots or something. You know, we we have no idea. So there's I mean, just hole after hole. And somebody did ask me in a in a uh forum recently, and I didn't quite answer it that way. They said, What would you do to improve the system? And I kind of was like, I don't want to try to put lipstick on a pig, you know, sure just butcher the pig and have a great sausage, you know. I mean, yeah, this thing doesn't I wouldn't want to fix this thing, it's it's like Frankenstein. Yeah, I mean, it's like in really bad shape. So I kind of hesitated in that forum coming up with with something that's positive about the current system and and and the convenience of it or something was like the best thing I could think of. Is oh, it's nice to have it convenient, you know. But uh that's uh no, no. So I uh I'm convinced that you know that whole scenario of the chain of voting, and even after the ballots come in, by the way, then they go into this machine, a scanner that I talked to the clerk about, yeah, a clear ballot system scanner, and um she says the IT department can't look at it. The county IT department's not allowed to touch it, not allowed to work on it, not allowed to look at it. She's not allowed to, she can only operate it. Um she says it's air gap, but when I talked to her, she didn't understand wireless, you know, cellular, Bluetooth, um 802.2. Yeah, you know, she didn't understand the network protocol, she didn't understand, she didn't understand there's different ways to make this machine networked without a wire, right? Because she's saying air gap, meaning there's no wire plugging into a network. Right. But most of us know with cell phones and laptops and tablets and all this to cars, you don't have to have a wire for your device to be connected to the internet. So anyway, and and the concern about hacking, I um and and those scanners, even in the firmware. I've talked to people about firmware, not everyone understands firmware, but I tell them it's like when your phone gets one of those major updates. If you have an iPhone or an Android, it says, hey, your phone needs a system update. That's really usually you call that a firmware update. Yeah, you know, so it's actually reprogramming the chips that are in your device. That could happen with a scanner, for example, that has communications, you know, in in seconds. I mean, it can update uh the code that's actually on that that reader device, the scanner's a reader, and and that scanner could be reprogrammed on the fly by somebody. Yeah, a bad actor, wherever, right? If it's got if they've got remote access. So I went through the calibration process with the clerk a couple cycles ago, and um I I had to hold my tongue. She asked for us not to speak when we observed, so I had to just watch. But the whole time I'm thinking like almost everything she was doing was just through a process that the vendor says you're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

And it's supposed to show that the machine's calibrating and it's going to read the ballots correctly. That's all fine. The concept's fine. But in reality, that could just be a show. Yeah. And the scanner could be reprogrammed, it could be in test mode, it does one thing. When it's in actual scanning mode, it does another. Yep. Because she she specifically puts it in test mode when she runs it and she's running a test ballot through. She has to test every the clerk has, I shouldn't say she, the clerk has to test every ballot that is created for that election. So, like I mentioned, there might be 47 different ballots. Right. Well, all 47 need to have a test run. So that's quite a bit of testing for the calibration. You need to make sure it's gonna read this, it's gonna read that, it's gonna read this, because each of those ballots will have different dots and different lines in different places, and so it has to be able to read those all uniquely and correctly. So, but my point to her at that time was but you don't even know that anything you're doing is worth anything. Yeah. Because again, things could change, it could be it's in a it's in a test mode versus a uh reality mode, and I mean just et cetera, et cetera. And and the fact that air gap means nothing. Yeah, it doesn't, it really doesn't. It's like one of those empty terms that they try to make it mean something, but it just doesn't really mean anything. So uh when it comes to security. And and and then, by the way, she takes the data off of that um machine, it's actually a small desktop that's connected to the scanner. She takes the USB thumb drive that she has to get the data from the computer that the scanner scanned in. And so, meanwhile, by the way, the data's sitting on a computer, so that's another potential problem, right? The computers can be failed. It could fail, it could have interception, it could have uh in um, you know, someone can breach the computer system, again, wirelessly. Yep. And but anyway, she puts in the thumb drive and she believes that she carries it to the to her laptop. She takes that thumb drive to her laptop, she insert it inserts it into her laptop, and only she, it's her laptop. Now, I don't think she doesn't mean a personal laptop, but she she calls it the one that she has in her office, and then she goes through the system on that machine to upload it to the Secretary of State. Wow. Well, now that, yeah, now now there's that data packet basically. I don't know if it's zipped or what kind of maybe proprietary encapsulation tool they might have or not. I don't know if it's in the open or if it's encrypted. I don't know any of that. Yeah, but regardless, it goes from that USB port into that computer, then it goes through the wire, you know, through the internet, right, you know, to the Secretary of State's office. That could all be intercepted, right? In fact, I don't even actually know where the Secretary of State's cloud service is or that communication link that she's counting on is actually taking it there. I don't know if there's a proxy server, which is like a server, you know, you know, a server in between, right? That it's hitting. There was all kinds of things they spotted at a very high level, uh, security level during the 2020 election and and earlier ones too, where there were connections from machines to other countries' servers. Yeah. There was one in Italy that they found was connected, there was one in Spain that they found that was connected. So uh this data is actually going to these other proxy servers wherever it is, and then back to where they're supposed to be. Or China or wherever. Wherever, exactly. Because once it hits the internet, it could be anywhere on the planet, right? Or a satellite, right, off the planet. So I tried there, that's so I know this took way too much time for what we were expecting. It's okay. But but there are so many holes. Somebody's got to do a diagram. And I I haven't looked for one, maybe it's already out there, but all the potential holes here in Oregon, people have to understand the difference between the ballot chain of custody of paper in person one day versus what I just described is astronomical. It is, it's like the difference between, I mean, yeah. So all that to say, too, that all those holes, the potential holes, so and I want to always say potential, yeah. Because I'm not saying that I have proof that there are violations that people have intercepted.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

But you could find it if you were the clerk. I mean, you can kind of go through and take that stuff apart and see what you can find. And I mean well one county at a time. I know there's like there's like you have to follow the state law, but yeah, and contracts too.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Right. So there's some problems there. Like I like if if, for example, the the hardware contract, software contract with ClearBallot states that no one can open this machine and no one can operate this OS in a normal mode. Like it's probably, I would imagine it's like in a kiosk mode. So kiosk mode really makes it really dumb. So basically, it can only do the functions that it's designed to do, and it won't let you go in and go to settings or control panel and change your wallpaper or you know, like you can't go in and change anything on the system. And I would doubt that the clerk has authority to uh um to get into the machine. They have the responsibility for the machine. This is what I was talking about earlier. The clerk has a responsibility for running a solid election, but no authority to ensure it because the clerk's not allowed to get into the machine. The clerk's not allowed by contract with clear ballot, and I'm just I'm presupposing from my understanding that that's the way it is. IT's not allowed. I was she did tell me that IT is not allowed to look at it, and no one is only you're only supposed to operate it. So we're we're being held hostage here. Yeah, by a vendor who has proprietary, that's what they call it. So you you can't see our code, our election software code. That's a lot of other states deal with that. They actually have election software. The closest thing we have to election software is that scanning software and the communication software that connects it to the Secretary of State. I'm sure she's not emailing an attached file. No, probably not.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

It's probably a little bit more secure than that.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

I would hope, I would hope. But right, they're probably sending it through it would be a VPN tunnel or something more sophisticated they should be using, but to try to keep that data secure. But regardless, my my hope is to be able to match authority with responsibility as a clerk, and the clerk's responsibility can be satisfied with the proper authority to make sure an election is being run. So that there is no doubt. The goal is, and I mentioned this in a forum the other day, too, and there weren't a lot of people that were happy to hear it, but that there's so many holes right now that what I would be trying to promote is trust in every voter that the election is legitimate.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

And again, some people um you know uh kind of wince at that and they're like, what? I mean, these there's conspiracy theorists all over the place, you know, and they throw that label around. And and they're always gonna doubt that the election's um solid when they lose. Yeah. And like you were saying that earlier, too. Like when when people win, they're like, hey, the f system's fine. Yeah. You know, but when you lose, you're on the losing side. You're like, wait, there's a lot of doubt here. You know, and it's it's totally natural and legitimate is the problem, unless you see it and there's a clear chain of custody on those ballots. Why should someone just take it for granted? People fought for the right to vote, people died for the right to vote. Exactly. And it's way more serious than Oregon has treated it for decades. And I think a lot of people, a lot of people have just gotten used to it. It's a little bit like the the frog in the boiling pot thing, right? Where over time you start to realize, hey, the water's fine. You know, what what could possibly be wrong? And until like so Democrats have been in control of the state legislature and the the the uh capital for a while. Yeah, right. So the the the governor's mansion if if the if the shoes were put on the other feet, I'm there's no doubt we've seen it in other states. You know, the Democrats would be saying, hey, something's wrong. Something's wrong with the voting system's wrong system. How'd those guys win? They're losers, you know. Yeah, and and something's wrong with the voting system. Look, we had Jimmy Carter, one of the very popular Democrat presidents, um in the 70s. He went and did a commission after he left the presidency. Um in fact, I think they called the report the Carter Commission when they finished it. Right. And uh it showed that mailing voting was the most risky, unreliable voting system you could possibly have. They didn't envision an electronic voting like uh the internet voting system that some people are trying to dream about, um, because that would be even worse. But they rated it as the worst. It was it was impossible, they they realized and and concluded after all their studies, it was impossible to have uh a legitimate mail-in voting system, vote-by-mail system. And and that was the Carter Commission. And then later, um, you had um other famous Democrats, by the way, and I'm only saying Democrats, so there's been Republicans too, but Democrats specifically, because they are in power in Oregon, you know. Um, but Amy Klobuchar, she's well known, and and Kamala Harris got on board this too, former vice president, uh, or former vice president, but also former presidential candidate. Kamala. Is that how you say her name? Yeah, Kamala, yeah, yeah. Kamala or Kamala? Is it Kamala?

SPEAKER_01 42:33

I argued about that. Apples, oranges, potato, potato.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Yeah, that's what I thought, but she took it very personally when you said it wrong. So I apologize for not knowing how to pronounce her name. But but the Kamala Harris, uh, Amy Klobichar, I think um Elizabeth Warren got on board too. They were all saying that mail-in voting must be outlawed. And they were adamant about that. And that was in the late 20 teens, right? So just less than 10 years ago, they they were complaining about it. They were like, this is horrible. And I don't know specifically if they were voting at or uh if they were pointing at Oregon's voting system. I don't remember that. Yeah, but they were looking at mail-in voting, bringing it into their states, and that's what they were saying. No way. Yeah, no way, no way, because this mail-in voting is filled and ripe with ability to trash it. And so look, those are a bunch of very prominent Democrats. Of course, the top of the ticket, Kamala Harris, she was running for president, and that was her view.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

And and Amy Klobuchar, she's been a very popular senator, she's running for governor right now in Minnesota, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

So, anyway, uh it's it's obvious that there Oregon is really suffering from having a very poor um election system. And and the trust, the lack of trust, that chases away voters. People say, Oh, you have to have mail in voting because look at our our um participation. Participation's Horrendous. It's still down in the 30%.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

I mean, it's because of that. That's the root of the issue.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

I've talked to several people. I had a former general manager for the company I worked for. And I asked him, because he's a good guy, a good American, good solid American, hardworking guy, worked his way up from the bottom of the company, you know, worked his way up to general manager. And I asked him, you know, why don't you vote anymore? He goes, I stopped voting 10 years ago. It's just a waste. I don't believe our votes count. You know, we vote for people, we get them in there, and of course they end up being somebody else. And so he was discouraged by voting in general. But he specifically said, I have no idea that those my voting that my vote matters. It it seems like no matter what we do, the other side always wins. Yeah. You know, and so he was a Republican, by the way. He's a conservative. But but he was like, Yeah, it's just pointless. He just gave up a total apathetic voter because he didn't trust the system, and he didn't trust the entire political system.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

A lot of people feel the same way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

It's just, and so until we fix the election system in Oregon specifically, we're not going to have peace, we're not going to have unity, we're not going to have confidence, we're not going to have high voter turnout, you know, because it's just people feel like they're totally discouraged and disenfranchised is one of the good key words because they feel like their vote doesn't count. So I would want to see as a little old clerk in Josephine County, which I don't have power over a lot as a clerk, um, there is authority and responsibility that needs to be there according to the charter and rules from the Secretary of State's office and even the Oregon Constitution dealing with voting. Um it needs to be taken care of.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

So and the proponents of mail-in voting, it's like older people, retired people, stuff like that. People that are disabled, they can't come in and vote. What do you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Well, yeah, so thank you. That that's a really good point. And I was glad that I remembered to mention something in my last uh forum that I was in for a long, long time. And I don't know when it started, but it was a long time ago. Um the country's always had absentee voting. Absented voting. Absentee voting is the way to do that. It's not hard. You you literally say, Hey, I have a hard time getting to my polling place and uh I would like to get a ballot so I can vote from home. And you literally sign up for it, a little three by five card or online. You say, Hey, I'm gonna sign up for my ballot. And they uh if you have a valid reason, which there's several a whole list of valid reasons, um, then they the uh clerk can then set you up for being uh an absentee voter. An absentee voter ha a ballot has a very um very similar process to the mail-in voting, but they're just restricted in number, so you can't have thousands and thousands suddenly show up like they do. Yeah, you know, and there still has to be an ID and they have to certify that it's them, and you know, there's several and signature verification, there's all that stuff on it still. But it's like you're supposed to sign on the envelope just like today. Yeah, you know, yeah, so you would still get your ballot. So those people are still taking care of the people in the retirement homes that can't get out, any kind of shut in, any kind of uh incapacitated person as far as physically incapacitated. Um, they they would still be an absentee voter. Okay, and that's fantastic. I'm totally in favor of that. There are some people who are against that too, by the way, and I don't think that's right. You you need to have absentee votes.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

Yeah, makes sense, or military overseas, yeah. Yeah, well, good luck to you, and you know, hopefully we, you know, we'll see what happens. I mean, the ballots are out, everybody's got their ballots.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

Oh, yeah. Ballots out yesterday, and uh it's exciting, um, but it's also kind of nerve-wracking because I know there's so many people that don't know. I'm glad you're doing this video. Yeah, there's a lot of people that don't know about um who to vote for, who the candidates are, or even how important it is. Yeah, you know, they might know president, they know governor. So education helps a lot, and people want to be educated. They're like, hey, you know what I'm busy, I'm working. See, I don't talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah, I don't have time, and so I didn't know. And um, I I mean I'd love to give it to all three clerks, you know, but I'm just like one podcaster, and and I saw you, and and I I was like, Darius, do you got a second? This was very impromptu.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Yeah, yeah, I don't even know what time it is, but so yeah, hopefully that this works out. Yeah. And there's a lot more, by the way, we could say, but that would have you for part two.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

Okay, cool. Thank you, Darius. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

All right.