ES&S Voting Machines Deployed with Factory-Installed 4G Wireless Modems Capable of Internet Connectivity (WI)

The OSC Gableman Report documented that ES&S voting machines deployed in Wisconsin municipalities were manufactured with 4G wireless modems installed at the factory level. These modems enabled the machines to connect to the internet through Wi-Fi hotspots, directly contravening the configuration requirements of Wis. Stat. § 5.91 and the federal VVSG framework, both of which mandate absolute network isolation for certified voting systems. A 4G modem is not a passive hardware component – it is an active radio transceiver capable of transmitting and receiving data over any available cellular network. The presence of factory-installed 4G modems in tabulation hardware that is required by law to be air-gapped means that the fundamental security premise of Wisconsin’s certified voting system configuration was false from the point of manufacture. Whether any of the factory-installed modems were active during the 2020 election – and whether any data was transmitted through them – is an open forensic question that has not been resolved, because Wisconsin’s voting machines were subsequently subjected to software updates that erased configuration-relevant records before forensic imaging was completed.