Discussion: Top DHS Official: Russian Cyberattacks Targeted Election Systems In 21 States

I remember a time when this sort of news would have been alarming to the public at large.

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And still Congress has done absolutely nothing about it. Goopers especially have no problem ignoring this as a problem. They are still fucking debating whether it actually happened, or if its really all that bad like they’re being told by our intelligence services, repeatedly. Minimizing the extent of the interference isn’t going to solve this before the next election and yet, that’s exactly where we’re at…with Congress continuing to play blind, deaf and ignorant.

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Same here. I’ve been waiting for the Julius and Ethel moment. Which would be ironic since Roy Cohn was Trump’s mentor.

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If a couple of black men had done this, what would the GOP response have been?

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I’m going out on a limb here, but I’ll bet the 21 states hacked were Blue or Purple in complexion…

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what is more sacred to american democracy than the right to vote and the authenticity of election results? any politician who brushes this aside should do the entire country a favor and go back to the private sector.

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If Trump had been President instead of FDR…

”This whole Pearl Harbor thing is a phony, made-up story.

How do we even know it was the Japanese, instead of some 400-pound guy sitting on a bed?

The only thing we have to fear…is the United States intelligence services.

Now I want all US press out of the Oval Office while I entertain General Tojo.”

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“None of these systems were involved in vote tallying,” Liles testified.

Sorry, I’m still not convinced there was no vote tampering. As the saying goes: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Ask yourself, 1) if the Russians were interested in accessing voter information, might they also be interested in tampering with vote tabulations? 2) are you confident in the cyber-security of the vote tabulation machines? 3) If the Russians could do it, do you think they would? 4) Are you confident that we would be able to tell if anyone tampered with the votes in a subtle way, and, even if so, would our government want that information released?

If it hasn’t happened yet, how much confidence do we have that it won’t in the future?

In theory, the distributive nature of our vote counting system should make it difficult to tamper with, but the narrow margins of our elections make it within the range of tampering. Exit polls should safeguard against these things, but ever since Bush vs. Kerry they have been assumed to be inaccurate. Polling information is now distrusted as well to the point where major upsets are commonplace. The entire voting system needs a major overhaul.

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The Congressional majority is hoping against hope that if the cyberattacks continue, that they will also continue to assist the GOP.

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How does this add to this story?

It appears that DHS did not, or were not allowed by state election officials to actually do an audit to see if votes were changed. How does robust voter ID laws effect these types of attacks on our system? How does this effect the voter rolls? I can imagine someones Voter ID being challenged because someone has tampered with the voting rolls. In states like texas the difference between the voter ID having a middle name and Dl not having that name can be used to discount your vote.

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They know it happened. Most no doubt think that Russian hacking is just a helpful extension of FoxNews.

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I think Congress is of the mind that it needn’t act on protecting our electoral system from the Russians because their own contractors are doing even more to exposing the system to hacks and abuse.

For example, their contractor left the confidential voting information of virtually every voter in America exposed for two weeks. The information being exposed and vulnerable to shenanigans is one thing. But why did they even have it in the first place? What were they doing (or plan on doing) with it?

One can only imagine. Or at least, I can.

And then there is all the voter scrubbing performed by people like Kobach. And … hell, the list of ways they’ve tried to cripple and rig the system goes on and on and on and on and …

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And conveniently never been proven to be true.

Goebbels is very happy with his legacy.

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how can anyone even say “None of these systems were involved in vote tallying,” with a straight face? If I can delete voters from the database selectively, I can reduce the number of votes for the person I don’t like. If I can add voters, I can increase the number of votes for the person I do like. If I can change voter information (especially if my co-conspirators have ever heard of absentee ballots) I can do both of those things at the same time. It’s like a bank claiming they’re invulnerable to fraud because only their wire-transfer system was hijacked, not their atm’s.

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If it had been done to aid Clinton what would the GOP response be?

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hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

The entire Clinton family would have been run out of the country on a rail.

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And they did that - all of it.

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All election systems should just be done on paper. The whole world can just wait an extra day or three to learn the outcome.

I don’t beleive any of this supposed labor-saving technology has the net effect of saving any labor, when you add up all the IT and cyber security costs, plus the intangible costs of lingering doubt and anxiety, long lines at the polls due to malfunctions and tech unsavvy voters, and fundamental questions about legitimacy.

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Well, according to the GOP having a GOP controlled government is far more sacred.

Actions speak louder than words.

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