In an interview with CNN, the Ohio man said he bought the machine online at Goodwill for $7.99 before auctioning it on eBay for $1,200.
Michigan’s Democratic attorney general has asked a special prosecutor to investigate her Republican challenger, Matthew DePerno, after finding evidence allegedly linking him to a scheme to hack voting machines used in the 2020 election. DePerno has denied the charges.
A bargain at Goodwill
Ean Hutchison, a 35-year-old Uber driver in Miamisburg, Ohio, has an eye for technology and an excellent record as an eBay seller. He scours the Web for deals on computer components such as motherboards and graphics cards, then resells them for a profit on eBay, often to similarly technically inclined people who are building or upgrading their own computers.
“I have a knack for finding hidden gems really cheap and making a quick profit,” Hutchison said, and he often finds these gems at thrift stores and Goodwill.
It was on a recent trawl of a Goodwill site in Michigan that Hutchison said he came across one of these gems.
“AVALUE TECHNOLOGY Touch Panel SID-15V-Z37-B1R,” was all the ad read. Images accompanying the ad showed a large display, possibly a touchscreen, with what looked like a slot for a key card or credit card. A handwritten sticker at the base of the screen read “Colfax.” Goodwill sold it for $7.99.
For the uninitiated, it would be difficult to know what this product was. A monitor that could perhaps be connected to a computer, perhaps. But why the slot for a card?
Hutchison knew what he was looking at.
It was a piece of campaign material that, he figured given where it was registered, had been used in the Michigan election.
“I didn’t even know they were supposed to be sold, let alone given to Goodwill,” Hutchison told CNN.
“Own a piece of history!”
The machine — a ballot marking device — arrived in the mail, and Hutchison later posted it on eBay. He set the eBay auction bid to start at $250, but gave potential buyers the option to skip the auction if they paid $1,200 upfront.
“Own a piece of history!” Hutchison’s eBay listing read. “This voting machine was one of thousands used in the 2020 United States presidential election and was included in one of several lawsuits against Dominion that were dismissed.”
Dominion Voting Systems was the subject of unsubstantiated claims after the 2020 election that its voting machines were hacked as part of a conspiracy to elect President Joe Biden. Dominion is currently embroiled in a multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against a handful of defendants, including Fox News, that fueled unsubstantiated claims that its machines were hacked in the 2020 election.
Seven hundred miles away, in his Connecticut apartment, Harry Hurst saw the ad.
Hursti is considered one of the leading experts on voting machine security and holds an event every August in Las Vegas where hackers access voting machines in an attempt to identify and fix potential vulnerabilities. As a result, Hursti has essentially become a voting machine collector — but the machines he can normally buy are old and retired.
That ad was unusual, Hursti said, because it claimed to be selling a device he believed might still be in use in Michigan.
Hursti bought the machine outright for $1,200. After turning himself in at his home last week, he contacted the Michigan Secretary of State’s office that oversees elections in the state. He says he was instructed not to open the box the machine came in, to preserve it for law enforcement who might need to scan it for fingerprints.
A few days later, an official from the secretary of state’s office emailed Hursti. “Thank you again for letting us know,” the email read. “We have identified this device as originating from one of our jurisdictions. The jurisdiction has now reported the device to law enforcement as stolen.”
It’s unclear how the voting machine ended up at Goodwill. It was delivered to Goodwill Northern Michigan’s e-commerce division from a Goodwill location in Cadillac, Michigan, a Goodwill spokesperson told CNN. Goodwill said in a statement that its team members process thousands of donations a week in Northern Michigan and are working with authorities to investigate the device.
The Wexford County clerk, which covers Cadillac and includes a town called Colfax, like the tag on the machine in question, told CNN Thursday she was looking for answers.
“I’m just as concerned, if not more so,” employee Alaina Nyman said when asked about the safety concerns raised by state officials.
Colfax Township Clerk Becky Stoddard declined to comment specifically on the device, citing an ongoing police investigation, though she said she keeps the voting equipment under lock and key and added that she doesn’t believe conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines.
“I’ve never had a problem with anything,” said Stoddard, who said she served as an employee for 22 years.
Security and conspiracy theories
In some states, voting machines may only be used a few days a year or every two years. But their safe storage is vital to ensuring the integrity of American elections. This can be a challenge given the decentralized nature of electoral systems in this country.
In Michigan, for example, there are more than 1,500 different voting jurisdictions in 83 counties, each with its own employee responsible for the security of its voting machines, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, told CNN in an interview in Detroit on Thursday that voters should be confident that elections in the state are safe.
She said her team contacted law enforcement as soon as they learned about the machine on eBay, and also pointed out that there are multiple machine checks both before and after Election Day to ensure accurate results.
That’s a point echoed by Hursti, who tries to find vulnerabilities in election systems for a living.
He told CNN that while the appearance of a Michigan voting machine on eBay raises concerns about how the machines are stored, the real threat is what election conspiracy theorists might do.
Over the past two years, people trying to prove the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen sought or gained unauthorized access to election systems.
Michigan State Police are investigating a series of voting machine hacks that occurred last year in several counties across the state.
“What you really have is people who don’t seem to understand the technicalities of the election process or election security trying to gain access to machines to keep the disinformation alive,” Benson said.
As for the machine that showed up at Goodwill, how it got there is a mystery police are trying to solve — as of Thursday afternoon, Hursti still had that piece of vital infrastructure at his home, waiting for someone to pick it up.
CNN’s Sean Lyngaas contributed to this report.
