A year-long research project led by an election integrity investigator from Utah, Sophie Anderson, and communications engineer, Dr. Charles Bernardin, has uncovered the mechanism that is being used to connect our election equipment at polling places across the nation. Anderson and Bernardin met while working together in several overlapping election integrity efforts. After submitting a countless number of public documents requests from multiple federal, state, and local governments, and working with other grassroots researchers, the team realized that the federal government has indeed created a nationwide network that is capable of collecting and changing real-time voting data at polling places across the country from a central location. The private network tool is called FirstNet, and like so many things that have proven detrimental to American liberty – it was sold as a tool to ensure public safety.
WHAT IS FIRSTNET?
The idea of a national cellular network dedicated to public safety was hatched in the wake of 9/11 when congested cell networks proved to be a bottleneck for first responders. In 2012, Congress created the First Responder Network Authority under the Department of Commerce to oversee the build-out of “FirstNet.” The original intent provided by its sponsors was that FirstNet would serve police, fire, and EMT services. However, the scope was soon expanded to include all “critical infrastructure” – which included water, energy, and transportation infrastructure. (https://www.digi.com/solutions/by-technology/firstnet )
Curiously, just days before Barack Obama left office, his administration’s Department of Homeland Security used the specter of “Russian interference” in the 2016 election as an excuse to declare election systems to be a part of that critical infrastructure. As a result, the stage was set to roll election systems into FirstNet.
The original plan to build FirstNet was to create a separate network with nationwide coverage that used a dedicated cellular band portion known as Band 14. Years and billions of dollars later, AT&T had built out the FirstNet Band 14 network with the coverage shown in the map below.