…especially with an assist from the R party and Diebold, a company owned by a Republican.
13 Likes
I am not sure that is a great reason though. I agree that money should go at the problem. I think NPR said it would cost hundreds of millions to do, seems worth it. But if there was a breach than it should be known. People do have a right to know that sort of thing.
Not sure that throwing it to later and then have historians pull together what they can and it comes to light that the Russians did hack machines and change enough things to potentially cause major issues. That may have not happened, but if it is did it is worth noting. And if there is not evidence of it than it is worth noting.
Seems critical for the nature of the democratic process. Our assumption is that everything happens on the up and up. It is a big deal if a foreign actor did things.
6 Likes
I wouldn’t be surprised if word came from higher up to not look into things further. Can’t be rocking the boat now.
6 Likes
Yeah, I’m not sure I entirely agree with the point of view expressed in my post (wouldn’t be the first time), I just think it’s a reasonable point of view. Russia wants to sow chaos, and if I were Putin and hadn’t managed to hack voting machines, I’d want to plant evidence indicating I had.
On the other hand, the Republican interest seems to be to keep a lid on things enough to complete the institution of authoritarianism. (I find it hard to believe I’m writing that and not feeling particularly hyperbolic.)
Thwarting both requires threading a needle, but I’d agree that it’s better to court chaos than lose our democracy through inaction.
12 Likes
Diebold sold its voting machine subsidiary to ES&S, a competitor, in 2009.
ES&S sold it to Dominion Voting Systems in 2010—all of the machines and the primary software, intellectual property, and the firmware and hardware.
2 Likes
Arizona …well, at least in my precinct, uses paper ballots and I prefer them because then there’s an actual record of my vote that could be compared to an electronic version.
10 Likes
Illustration… TPM composite/Christine Frapech - Nice artwork.
4 Likes
“Dominion” ? Uh-oh…
7 Likes
Good article. Have been thinking about Russ Fiengold’s loss this fall. He had been polling ahead of Johnson even up to the election. This loss was as much of a shock to me as HC losing. Wondering if I’m joining the tin foil hat crowd, but I think their is something to many of last fall’s close results. Heh, I wrote polling and Johnson in the same sentence…heh, heh.
16 Likes
Not 25%. If the margin were that large, Democrats might hand the victories back and say, “Clearly there is a problem here. We need a new vote.” Such a step would then make Democrats the party of good government–which they are already but many people don’t want to admit that–and give them a lock on politics until memories fade.
2 Likes
I’m sure the powers that be think that we, as a country, can’t handle the truth. They may even be right. But we need to find out the truth and we need to hear it and we need to deal with it no matter how awful it is.
I hope folks are looking at the GOP, not just the Russians, regarding vote hacking. Rove appeared to try and failed in 2012, probably tried with updated tactics in 2016 (picked up from new best buddies in the Kremlin?)
6 Likes
The sad thing is, not only do the Repubs not care, they could even be complicit. Heck, as @dangnewt mentioned, they’d do the hacking themselves, if they knew they could pull it off. The have no morals and willingly lie, cheat and steal to win.
I am so tired of all this, and so without hope that it will turn around. Already the Repubs are setting the stage for a discrediting of Mueller. It is all so sickening.
11 Likes
Some have speculated that voting machines were hacked when Obama was elected. We need to know the truth!
Dirty Little Secret #14:
Republicans really don’t care about national defense. They just like the spending, their welfare program.
7 Likes
Have you seen approval ratings recently? 25% would be plausible.
So the Obama Administration, i.e., the Democrats, didn’t check them when they had a chance.
Already been done. Hacking convention, one person with $35 worth of Radio Shack parts walked through an area with nine different voting machines. Eight gave out wrong votes and on only a few were they able to detect that the travesty had occurred at all.
7 Likes
“The intelligence community has been pretty clear that while [the
Russian hacking teams] may have favored Trump in the election, their
interest is in undermining our democracy,” said Norden.
I keep hearing this argument and I’m not buying it. If the goal really were to create chaos, they could (apparently pretty easily) create highly anomalous results–say inner city precincts in Cleveland going 95% Trump or Palm Beach County going Buchanan (okay bad example).
4 Likes
or audit.
4 Likes
It should be a giant deal. Unfortunately, the Republicans are downplaying foreign involvement saying, so what?
5 Likes