Mitch McConnell is Making the 2020 Election Open Season for Hackers

[babylonsister]

Mitch McConnell is Making the 2020 Election Open Season for Hackers
By Sue Halpern
June 11, 2019


On May 21st, four commissioners who compose the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (E.A.C.) were asked to attest, in Congress, that they agreed with the findings of the special counsel Robert Mueller that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. It was a strange and oddly suspenseful moment in what might have been a routine oversight hearing of the House Administration Committee.

The E.A.C. is a small, relatively obscure agency, established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (H.A.V.A.), an election-modernization bill that was passed in response to the disastrous failure of voting equipment during the 2000 Presidential election. H.A.V.A. allocated over three billion dollars to the states to upgrade their election systems and authorized the E.A.C. to distribute it. The E.A.C. was also mandated to advise election officials and oversee the testing and certification of voting and vote-tabulation machines. Seventeen months away from the next Presidential election, it could be leading the charge against future cyberattacks. It is not.

“I want everyone to know that, in my view, what happened in 2016 will make what happens in 2020 look like small potatoes,” Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who sits on the Intelligence Committee, told me. “It’s not just the Russians. There are hostile foreign actors who are messing with two hundred years’ worth of really precious history.” Wyden recently reintroduced the PAVE Act, a wish list of election-security provisions that failed to get through the Senate last year. The measure includes the use of hand-marked paper ballots and a prohibition on wireless modems and other kinds of Internet connectivity, all of which have been advocated by computer scientists and other election experts for years.

But with the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, making it clear that he will not advance any election-security legislation, the PAVE Act, and also other election-security bills, many of which have bipartisan support, will languish. McConnell has made 2020 open season for hackers aiming to undermine our election system. The E.A.C. has made this easier, by displaying not only intransigence and institutional weaknesses but also a willful disregard of the threats facing our elections.

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https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/mitch-mcconnell-is-making-the-2020-election-open-season-for-hackers?mbid=social_facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_brand=tny&utm_source=facebook&utm_social-type=owned&fbclid=IwAR2KXBUH0gMSPpdLfMW7_bdHa2HlRwFu9Lu5l8HFIchxFohvyhFXbj964x8

[Midnight Writer]

1. Isn't it odd that everyone automatically assumes voting hacks will benefit the Republicans?

It's almost as if they have a reputation for this sort of thing.