The Vanishing Votes of 2024

A small lab in Alabama, a court case in New York, and a billion-dollar deal with political ties are raising questions about how the votes were counted in 2024

The Strange Case of Rockland County

Rockland County in New York is the type of place that quickly reminds you that the type of Norman Rockwell Americana we grew up idolizing was and is very real. The county and its 338,000 residents are mostly white with an average age of 35 years.

So in a nation that has been soundly rejecting any lawsuits alleging voter tampering, a recent ruling by Judge Rachel Tanguay seemed to buck the nationwide trend. In this all-American county, she allowed a challenge to an election result to proceed to move forward to the evidence-gathering phase. Why? These were not conspiracy-laden theories with no proof, quite the opposite: on-the-ground facts are what drove the case.

• Nine voters swore they voted for Senate candidate Diane Sare; only five votes were counted.

• In another district, five voters said they voted for her; only three votes showed up.

• Statistical oddities backed it up: Trump got 23% more votes than the Republican Senate candidate, while Harris got 9% fewer than the Democratic candidate.

University of Alabama statistician Max Bonamente said these gaps are “highly unusual” and would need “extreme” explanations. Rockland isn’t a hardcore red or blue area—it’s competitive, which makes these discrepancies stand out.

The Lab That Went Dark

The Rockland County case is such an outlier, it’s reverberating as far away as Huntsville, Alabama, and with Jack Cobb— the director of Pro V&V— is the leader of a federally accredited lab responsible for testing and approving updates to voting machines used in elections across the United States, including in Rockland County, New York.

In 2024, these concerns were amplified by reports that Pro V&V—under Cobb’s leadership—approved changes to voting equipment just before the election. While Cobb has stated that these changes were minor, they were anything but.

These weren’t just any voting machines—Election Systems & Software (ES&S) systems handle votes in over 40% of U.S. counties. That’s millions of ballots. Right after the election, when people started asking questions about the changes, Pro V&V’s website was stripped down to a fraction of itself. Reduced to a single page with just a phone number and email. No explanation, no documents, nothing.

Why would a lab in charge of election integrity go silent? There’s no proof of any wrongdoing, but this determined effort to avoid scrutiny doesn’t pass the snuff test because it only serves to amplify interest in the company, not reduce it.

De Minimis or De Minus Your Vote?

Pro V&V approved what they called “de minimis” changes to ES&S machines—fancy talk for “small tweaks” that don’t need public scrutiny, but in reality there was nothing minimal about them:

• New ballot scanners

• Updated software for reporting results

• Modified firmware

• Changes to audit files

These machines process millions of votes securely but they present serious anomalies but because the machines create a closed network in each district, one piece of bad code in the system could corrupt the entire network ? Could software be covertly inserted into machines only to awaken later with specific tasks. The fact that these occurred in 4th most consequential elections in history, Pro V&V’s missing documentation isn’t helping.

Why 2024 Feels Different

Unlike 2020’s loud fraud claims, this isn’t about overturning results or rallying crowds. It’s election security advocates quietly pointing to specific evidence: sworn testimony, statistical anomalies, and missing oversight. Yet, Democratic officials, scarred by 2020’s chaos, aren’t touching it. They’re wary of fueling more “stolen election” talk, even if the focus here is transparency, not conspiracy.

The Corporate Transaction Timeline

But perhaps the most unexpected intersection of the Rockland County story is with Barre Seid. In the midst of a heated election, Seid transferred his entire fortune made from his family’s electronic manufacturing firm —Tripp Lite—to the Marble Freedom Trust. This trust is run by Leonard Leo, a conservative powerhouse behind the Supreme Court’s current majority.

Weeks later, Eaton Corporation bought Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion, funneling the money to Leo’s political group. Eaton also partnered with Palantir Technologies for “AI-driven oversight” of connected systems. Why did a 50-year owner of election tech hand it to a political operative right after a disputed election? And what could these new AI partnerships do with systems linked to voting machines?

What are the odds of four nexus of investigation emerging at one time around a single voting machine and platform? It’s highly unlikely, but we’ve identified all four:  

• Pro V&V goes dark after election integrity questions

• Major updates to voting machines marked as minor and left unsupervised

• Unusual deal nexus from ES&S owner connecting to Thiel’s Palantir and Leonard Leo 

• Statistical anomalies

The Market Power Problem

ES&S controls over 60% of U.S. voting machines. Only two labs, including Pro V&V, can certify them. That’s a lot of power in very few hands, with little public oversight. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found “exploitable flaws” in ES&S systems that could let someone alter results or wipe audit records. Did Pro V&V’s “minor” changes fix these issues? We don’t know—their records are gone.

What’s Next?

The Rockland County case is now in discovery, where lawyers will dig into voting records, machine logs, and certification details. If they find more than statistical quirks, other counties might follow suit. This case could set a precedent for asking tough questions about election security without the 2020-style backlash.

Democracy needs trust, but trust needs transparency.