That disclaimer is a pre-emptive admission of failure, says Bruce McConnell, who served until 2013 as the top cybersecurity officer for DHS. “They admit that they are not taking responsibility for the validity of the system,” McConnell told The Intercept. “They’re saying, ‘Your vote may be counted correctly, incorrectly, or may not be counted at all, and we are not taking any responsibility for that.’ That kind of disclaimer would be unacceptable if you saw it on the wall of a polling place.”