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[super-heated plasma]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-election-hacking.html

The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November.

Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours.

Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters' identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham's software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before.

”It felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack," Ms. Greenhalgh said about the voting troubles in Durham.

Beyond VR Systems, hackers breached at least two other providers of critical election services well ahead of the 2016 voting, said current and former intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is classified. The officials would not disclose the names of the companies.

Intelligence officials in January reassured Americans that there was no indication that Russian hackers had altered the vote count on Election Day, the bottom-line outcome. But the assurances stopped there.

Government officials said that they intentionally did not address the security of the back-end election systems, whose disruption could prevent voters from even casting ballots.

 

[a.wd]

It's like the plot of ten films

 

[Extollere]

So tampering with actual votes then?

 

[jerry113]

why they acting like the cold war never ended

 

[BlueTsunami]

So didn't effect final counting but something nearly as bad

 

[DUFFMCWALIN]

So tampering with actual votes then?

100%. I guarantee it. They were very cautious with their wording at the time.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Our election was rigged

 

[Heroman]

Isn't this a act of war?

 

[rambis]

So tampering with actual votes then?

No but I would guess there is some fraud law broken here.

 

[The Driver]

When this is all said and done we are gonna need a season of TV at the least for this shit, like on some American Crime Story or HBO shit.

 

[Plinko]

I was called a "bedwetter" in PoliGAF after saying I was worrying about this before the election. It was obvious the ability to do this was there.

 

[Kensation]

2018 is going to be much worse.

 

[TAJ]

So didn't effect final counting but something nearly as bad

I'm pretty sure the actual vote count was messed with in at least Wisconsin. The difference between stations with paper ballots and electronic-only ones was way too big in favor of Trump.

 

[Ardenyal]

Combine this with the fact that they hacked the DNC database to know who to block from voting and it's definitely vote tampering.

 

[super-heated plasma]

100%. I guarantee it. They were very cautious with their wording at the time.

It's more like they stopped people from voting in the first place.

Ms. Greenhalgh will be watching closely. “What people focus on is, ‘Did someone mess with the vote totals?’” she said. “What they don’t realize is that messing with the e-poll books to keep people from voting is just as effective.’”

 

[snausagesUK]

Our election was rigged

So Donald was right then?

 

[rambis]

I was called a "bedwetter" in PoliGAF after saying I was worrying about this before the election. It was obvious the ability to do this was there.

I mean phishing itself is a billion dollar industry. Everyone from average joes to CEOd get hit, there's plenty of evidence that social engineering works amazingly well.

 

[B-Dubs]

It's more like they stopped people from voting in the first place.

That seems to be the conclusion the article comes to, which is much easier to do and just as bad.

 

[skullmuffins]

Our election was rigged

and Trump knew it was going to be, and so his constant claims of a rigged election were intentional - knowing that Democrats and the media would object in the strongest of terms and call his assertions nonsense, they'd be politically unable to then claim that the election was rigged in Trump's favor after he won. 54th dimensional chess. Unfortunately this seems more and more plausible every day.

 

[Kusagari]

That seems to be the conclusion the article comes to, which is much easier to do and just as bad.

I'm sure that was the real point all along. Stop blue areas from being able to vote in swing states

 

[Linkura]

So basically Hillary should be President right now.

Fuck me.

 

[Baron von Loathsome]

I feel like it's only going to get worse.

 

[BrassDragon]

It's more like they stopped people from voting in the first place.

This is the gist of it. Not just by hard measures (getting registrations off the rolls) but mostly by soft measures (depressing voters with a targeted saturation of fake news.)

The public is currently unable to imagine 'vote hacking' to mean anything other than actually compromising the tallies. That masses of people can be 'hacked' through psychological measures is too dissonant with their values.

 

[Ocara]

If this happened at a large enough scale that the election was essentially invalid (only won via tampering) what would we even do? I personally think its likely but see no way any kind of reset, revote, impeachent, etc could go well for the stability of our democracy.

Maybe that was the whole point...

 

[StoOgE]

That seems to be the conclusion the article comes to, which is much easier to do and just as bad.

Especially if you focus it on extremely blue pockets of swing states and you have donor rolls from the DNC hack to purge from the rolls.

I mean, honestly, this is exactly what the Republicans have been doing by purging voter rolls and using voter suppression tactics since they all switched from the Dem party sometime in the 70s and 80s where they were doing the same thing under Jim Crow laws.
ed
So, this is basically about as bad as the basic RNC platform about "voter fraud" prevention.

 

[More_Badass]

If this happened at a large enough scale that the election was essentially invalid (only won via tampering) what would we even do? I personally think its likely but see no way any kind of reset, revote, impeachent, etc could go well for the stability of our democracy.

Maybe that was the whole point...

I think the partisan nature of Democrats and Republicans, of the right wing media and how their voters and politicians view liberals and democrats, and the general public's trust in checks and balances would prevent any major changes from happening even if something like that happened

 

[JABEE]

I was called a "bedwetter" in PoliGAF after saying I was worrying about this before the election. It was obvious the ability to do this was there.

The phrase "vote early and vote often" wasn't invented in a vacuum. People have long speculated the 1960 election was rigged by LBJ in Texas and organized crime in Illinois.

I guess things like computers and verification systems made people feel like such a thing couldn't happen in a national election. Turning eligible citizens away as ineligible is just as damaging as changing vote totals.

 

[Isak_Borg]

and as our democracy bites the dust the American people just went "MEH?".

 

[Jive Turkey]

and Trump knew it was going to be, and so his constant claims of a rigged election were intentional - knowing that Democrats and the media would object in the strongest of terms and call his assertions nonsense, they'd be politically unable to then claim that the election was rigged in Trump's favor after he won. 54th dimensional chess. Unfortunately this seems more and more plausible every day.

I think it's far more plausible that he thought "If they're gonna cheat, we are too." while not really sure what the Russians were doing.

 

[Shoeless]

and as our democracy bites the dust the American people just went "MEH?".

I don't think Republicans actually want a democracy anymore. They want an Emperor and a familial monarchy. But only as long as that monarchy is white and racist.

 

[TAJ]

This is the gist of it. Not just by hard measures (getting registrations off the rolls) but mostly by soft measures (depressing voters with a targeted saturation of fake news.)

The public is currently unable to imagine 'vote hacking' to mean anything other than actually compromising the tallies. That masses of people can be 'hacked' through psychological measures is too dissonant with their values.

Yet they're willing to believe that university educations are bad because they're liberal brainwashing operations.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

I'm sure the administration will get to the bottom of this. This is an act of war in my opinion, but we will do nothing about it.

To directly and actively prevent people from voting....

 

[HammerOfThor]

And we all called the Independant candidate(sorry, forgo her name) crazy for opening an investigation after. Even if her reasons may have been out of pettiness, I needed to be done.

I'm sure there's deeper knowledge in the FBI and other security acengies that know a shit ton more, but a) are scared our democracy can't handle it like Obama was and/or b) know there's nothing they can do until there's an administration change

 

[Slime]

I know I'm approaching tinfoil territory here, but if the Russians added actual votes in Trump's favor and the US found out about it, I'm not certain they'd ever inform the public.

 

[JABEE]

I know I'm approaching tinfoil territory here, but if the Russians added actual votes in Trump's favor and the US found out about it, I'm not certain they'd ever inform the public.

It's like the question of if Russia was involved in Kennedy's assassination, would America be allowed to know about it in a post nuclear world?

Would the public not want revenge?

 

[BrassDragon]

Yet they're willing to believe that university educations are bad because they're liberal brainwashing operations.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

 

[Meowster]

So all the claims Trump made of the election being rigged were true and he knew it was likely? Since that seems to have been the case with everything he's deflected from and repeated over and over so far.

 

[SolarPowered]

A Republican wet dream

Between Republican voter suppression and Russian election interference being a minority democrat voter is tougher than ever.

 

[Lightning_Roller]

But we lost and we should get over it, right republicans??


Fucking hell this is so fucked.

 

[UberTag]

So didn't effect final counting but something nearly as bad

No need to interfere in the count when you can prevent people from voting at all.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

It's like the plot of ten films

and then someone actually tries to make them...

Spoiler

Also, in the context of this topic and elections, the Netherlands switched back to paper a few years ago exactly because these concerns existed (and will likely persist for some time). Our election result was fairly alright, but even without digital systems there was a pretty clear divide politics wise. It wouldn't exactly take a big push to flip it further.

 

[jimmypython]

The actual vote count wasn't incorrect. But they turned the voters away?

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

Well, Republicans have been trying to do this themselves for years and they live here. Why wouldn't an enemy of the state?

 

[More_Badass]

No need to interfere in the count when you can prevent people from voting at all.

Also subtle enough that Republicans can just deflect it as the voter's problem or registration issues or whatnot, and the general public will just shrug and go "oh, yeah, that makes sense"

 

[GoldenEye 007]

Also subtle enough that Republicans can just deflect it as the voter's problem or registration issues or whatnot, and the general public was just shrug and go "oh, yeah, that makes sense"

Not sure how they can spin valid and active registration cards being turned away, though. I mean, they will but that's pretty clear.

 

[cackhyena]

What the fuck.

 

[Extollere]

I don't think Republicans actually want a democracy anymore. They want an Emperor and a familial monarchy. But only as long as that monarchy is white and racist.

I think they still want a democracy, they just want it to be a choice between two different racist pro-life religious demagogues.

 

[LProtag]

This whole election is going to have an entire chapter in a history textbook one day.

 

[Lowmelody]

And Trump wanted to coordinate with Russia on future election security. He attempted to walk it back but his intentions are clear with increasing context.

Our election was hacked and there is no reason to think the next one wont be. The experiment is over. Who knows when the next one will begin but for now it's dark days.

 

[BigJonsson]

Very glad the Canadian federal elections are still done with paper ballots and paper voting rolls