A former senior undercover CIA operative named Gary Berntsen has released a video in which he asserts, based apparently on first-hand knowledge, that machines widely used in elections across the United States are unreliable.

The charges are not new. They include claims that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez developed them to steal one of his own elections. And then, with help from others in Europe and China, the software and hardware were refined to engineer undetected desired electoral outcomes worldwide.

What is new news is that Mr. Berntsen reportedly has not only personal insights into how we got here. He claims to have witnesses able and willing to confirm his allegations.

If true, we obviously cannot have such compromised machines used in this fall’s critically important elections. We must, instead, hand-count paper ballots cast in person by voters with valid government-issued IDs.

This is Frank Gaffney.