Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), spoke to 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley about the recent election, and explained how the widespread use of paper ballot records gave him great faith in the election’s integrity.

Krebs was famously fired by President Donald Trump over Twitter for the unforgivable sin of releasing a report calling the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.”

Krebs, a lifelong Republican, joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and Trump appointed him to lead the newly-created agency CISA in 2018.

Krebs told Pelley that part of his job entailed “gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election,” and they had worked through “countless, countless scenarios.”

One of the major priorities for Krebs was encouraging the increased use of paper ballots.

“Paper ballots give you the ability to audit, to go back and check the tape and make sure that you got the count right,” said Krebs, calling paper ballots “really one of the keys to success for a secure 2020 election.”

Krebs explained that 82% of the ballots used in the 2016 presidential election had a paper record associated with them. In 2020, that figure increased to 95%.

“And with a paper record, you can go back and verify what the machine is saying by physically counting the paper?” asked Pelley.

“That gives you the ability to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote,” replied Krebs, pointing to the results in Georgia, where the hand recount of the paper ballot records was “consistent” with the vote count as tabulated by the machines.

“And that tells you what?” asked Pelley.

“That tells you that there was no manipulation of the vote on the machine count side,” said Krebs, and “pretty thoroughly, in my opinion, debunks some of these sensational claims out there — that I’ve called nonsense and a hoax, that there is some hacking of these election vendors and their software and their systems across the country. It’s– it’s just– it’s nonsense.”

Krebs made similar comments on Twitter, noting that the “proof is in the paper ballots,” and how their results were verified because “every canvass, audit, or recount conducted by hand has been consistent.”

“Can’t hack paper,” tweeted Krebs.

Watch the video above, via CBS.

The post Chris Krebs: 95% of 2020 Ballots Were Paper, Showing There Was ‘No Malicious Algorithm or Hacked Software’ That Changed Votes first appeared on Mediaite.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/3obUfi3