Esquire: "We're supposed to believe that the Russians hacked into voting systems but did nothing..."

[triron]

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28517486/russia-hack-election-systems-all-50-states/

NYT:
" The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Thursday that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time, but at the demand of American intelligence agencies the committee was forced to redact its findings so heavily that key lessons for the 2020 election are blacked out."

[Pachamama]

1. Yes, pretty much that is what we are supposed to believe

Nyet....

[stopdiggin]

12. probably because that's what the reports keep saying

nothing new here at all. Just one more reporter getting all worked up about "ratf*ckery" and "dog won"t hunt" and other breathless little gems. Plenty of outrage. But essentially devoid of any substance or fact.

the bottom line, from the Esquire article in OP --

"It concluded that while there is no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines, “Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data” in the Illinois voter database. The committee found no evidence that they did so."

Please wake me up when a creditable source comes forward with evidence .. rather than speculation.

[Pachamama]

13. Seriously?

I guess if we heard the worlds top jewel thief walked into 50 various museums that stored priceless gems and we were told that they just were looking and not casing the joints, we should all believe that too?



Yeah, sure...

[triron]

17. I like this analogy.

[stopdiggin]

21. but you would want some "evidence"

before charging him with theft? (or perhaps in this case you wouldn't?) The problem lies in using a "we all know" standard in the place of actual evidence. As long as the reports come back saying "found no evidence of ..." Then that's what we've got. No evidence. And thus -- the wake me up comment.

[lagomorph777]

22. Right - we should just assume that all systems are normal and go about our business.

That would be completely fucking insane.

If you came home and found mysterious footprints all over your living room carpet, would you consider changing the locks on your house?

[stopdiggin]

24. nope. you should definitely ASSUME

that hacking and attempted breaches (both internal and external) WILL be part of scenario for all elections going forward. All attempts to harden that target should be supported. And election officials need to come to grips with a new normal.

(To address your analogy. I would definitely change the locks. I would not however report my jewelry and silver stolen .. until I had counted my jewelry and silver and found some missing. You?)

--

[lagomorph777]

25. I wouldn't know what to think if the cops had locked me out of the house

after the incident.

That's the problem we face now.

[stopdiggin]

29. a valid point

but that is a problem with your election system and your election officials. You want more monitoring, a more transparent process? Have at it! But that is still a separate issue from asserting that something happened (the Ruskies did it!) .. if you have no evidence to support that it happened.

(do you claim your silver stolen .. when locked outside the house by the cops?)

[lagomorph777]

30. Thanks for the hint about your identity.

Pretty much as I expected.

"My" election system has indeed been vulnerable since Russiapublicans and Russian Bots and Russian Trolls have been attacking it for years.

We aren't friendly to trolls at DU.

[stopdiggin]

31. oh, for goodness sake! get serious!

someone offers you a difference of opinion .. and now they're an agent of the Russian government. Bit of a reach, maybe?

[ThoughtCriminal]

35. "Your" election system?

Uh, just WHERE are you?

[stopdiggin]

36. elections are run by individual states

therefore problems (and improvements) have to be addressed at state level. What state you live in is obviously going to effect what type of system is in place. If you think paper ballots are a good idea and a solution to some of the issues in our elections .. go to your state officials! AND .. if you think the fact that your state's voter registrations rolls were hacked is a bad thing .. you ALSO go to your state officials! I would have thought this was common knowledge.

i.e. .. your system is different than mine (unless you live in the same state that I do). Different machines, different rules, different security efforts, different voting requirements, different methods of handling and reporting results .. all decided at the state level. Right?

[triron]

37. Good try. Otherwise nothing to say.

[Captain Stern]

38. That's a good analogy.

If I knew that the world's top jewel thief had walked into 50 various museums that stored priceless gems, I'd definitely think that the thief was there to case the places.

However, if none of the folks at the museum claimed gems were missing, and the police that were investigating said no gems were missing.....I'd think no gems were stolen.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

39. except you can count physical gems. you can't count "votes" as electrons

Voting should take place with physical tokens.

Voters cannot see and verify electrons.
The public cannot see and count electrons.

Electronic voting machines are not jewel cases holding physical gems.
You stretch the analogy too far.

[Captain Stern]

40. Fair enough.

The analogy would be more apt if we said that not only were no gems missing, but none of the folks at the museum or the police said that there was any evidence that the cases the jewels were in (voting machines) had been tampered with at all.

I don't think for a second that there aren't plenty of folks that would change the vote count if they could, but I've seen zero evidence that they did.

But I also don't think that if there actually was evidence that this was done, that people like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Time Kaine, or Barack Obama would be staying quiet about it. If actual votes were flipped from Hillary to trump, she'd have been the most affected person of all.....yet, she has never once claimed that this is what happened.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

41. you are still confusing real items with abstract states of electronic devices

It IS NOT POSSIBLE to determine if "votes" were flipped within electronic computing devices.

The numbers spit out by the devices can NOT be verified without physical tokens of each and every vote.

Programmable computers are programmable.

[Captain Stern]

42. I understand.

Of course we can't determine exactly where each electron goes, but we can verify results.

For instance, our interaction here is being done entirely electronically. We aren't sending each other letters written on paper. We're typing things on our computer screens, and then expecting what we typed to be what actually appears on DU.

I don't doubt for a second that the folks running DU could actually alter what I've typed.

But everything that I've ever typed in a post has appeared on DU exactly the way I typed it. I've also never seen anyone else claim that their posts had been altered.

So, I'd say that there is no evidence that the folks that are running DU are altering posts.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

43. no. you can NOT verify votes cast electronically

You can certainly verify your text messages posted on DU. You cannot verify any vote you have cast via an electronic "voting" machine.

You cannot see within the electronic "voting" machine. You have no way to determine its state before, during, or after you interact with it.

The public cannot look at the outside of the device and determine whether you have voted or launched a nuclear warhead at your neighbor's garage.

Any election which does not rely primarily on a physical token, such as a paper ballot, to record individual votes is fundamentally flawed and cannot be verified.

Using electronics to conduct a poll on DU is fine. Using electronics to conduct an election to some office of trust is just nuts.

[Captain Stern]

44. I agree to an extent, but any voting system has flaws.

Including ones done by paper ballot only.

That's why elections are monitored. (by both sides).

I'd actually love to believe that trump won the election only because some hackers changed the vote totals. That would be better than knowing that a LOT of people in this country intentionally voted for him. But the truth is, a lot of people did, and will again.

Michigan uses a paper ballot only....and went to trump. If the Russians, or whoever, could get enough people in Michigan to vote trump's way, why is it unreasonable to think that the same method wouldn't work in other states?

Why take the risk of changing somebody's vote, when you can actually get them to cast the vote that you want them to?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

46. it's simple. electronic voting can NOT be verified

Saying "any voting system has flaws" does not change the fact that electronic voting is fundamentally flawed and cannot be verified.

With electronic voting:
The voter cannot verify his or her vote.
The public cannot verify the voter voted and cannot verify any votes were tallied correctly and cannot verify that no votes were discarded or otherwise manipulated.

With paper ballots:
The voter can verify his or her vote.
The public can verify the voter voted, without knowing the contents of the voter's ballot, and can verify the ballots are not corrupted while awaiting the tally, which the public can verify.

It is possible to compromise an election conducted with paper ballots. It is not possible to verify an election conducted electronically.

One system starts out as verifiable; the other starts out as not verifiable.

[triron]

47. The fact that Russians were probing election systems (in all 50 states) should, in itself,

cast doubt on election results. When one adds it the vulnerabilities it only enhances
that doubt; in fact, it makes changing results (especially given exit poll results) quite
plausible if not likely.

[2naSalit]

2. Demand that your state use paper ballots!

It's not too late to make that adjustment before 2020. Start demanding it now.

[diva77]

11. needs to be hand-marked paper ballots...the latest scam is Ballot Marking Devices which are selling

like hotcakes -- these are no better than the DREs -- the con is: the bar-coded paper that the BMD spits out is a ballot.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that your vote will be counted as cast with these devices. Your vote disappears into the software/hardware and spits out a barcode at the end. Additionally, when you submit the paper that allegedly has your votes on it, the machine can change your vote on the paper unbeknownst to you.

[2naSalit]

15. Good point!

In my state I vote on hand marked paper ballots, by mail. I agree that electronically marked ballots are no better than the screen voting machines. I think we need a system where votes are hand counted too, it's how it worked until about thirty years ago. Once a way to throw elections via voting machines became known it's been the norm it seems.

This is not the only country whose populace is demanding fair elections right now, fair elections are under attack everywhere and I would go so far as to speculate that it's a global issue due to multinational corporations trying to gain control of the planetary resources and control over all people.

[TheRealNorth]

33. We essentially use scantrons in MN and WI

Scannable test cards worked for standardized tests and college exams, I don't see why that same techmology can't be used everywhere for voting. The counting may be a little slower but you have the paper records that can examined.

I also think that there should be a random number of precincts that should be hand-counted to ensure the there isn't any systematic problems with the machines.

[lagomorph777]

23. I completely agree. That's just another scam. We hand mark ballots here

and it's dead-simple. No excuse for any intermediary machines. None.

[UniteFightBack]

3. Yes, the damage is done just by them poking around. This article confirms that. nt

[Think-b4-U-act]

4. In New York, the old mechanical system worked just fine

So what if it took longer to report the results. The first consideration should not be having a TV show where the results are known before midnight.

[diva77]

6. The focus on needing results more quickly is a distraction from the true motive for the machines -

that it's a piece of cake to rig an election with them.

[Think-b4-U-act]

8. This is pretty much proven

the excuse is rapid reporting of results.

[diva77]

5. This is THE elephant in the LR - 3 rethug corporations supply the majority of "voting" machines

for the ENTIRE country. "Elected" officials always grant hundreds of millions for purchase of more and more equipment despite the warnings of cyber-experts. "Nice political office ya got there, too bad if anything were to happen to it."

[dem in texas]

7. Hillary won by 3 million votes, she is the true president

The Russian hacked the Electoral College votes. It took a mathematical wizard to figure out what states and what counties to hack in order to swing the Electoral votes to Trump.

Remember the mathematical professor who worked with Cambridge Analytics? He lived in London. but took off for Russia as soon as fingers were pointed to Cambridge Analytics. It only took 3 or 4 counties in three states to tip the electoral votes by less than 1/2 of one percent to give the Presidency to Trump.

[triron]

18. I think it was likely 4 states (Add Florida).

[Think-b4-U-act]

9. We have to make this change state by state

and the federal government only pays for it.

[UCmeNdc]

10. It matters who and how the votes are counted.

One for you and three for me, one for you and two for me, one for you and four for me, etc.

[ElementaryPenguin]

14. Except the exit polls (remember those?) proved the vote was hacked in swing states!!

Enough to steal the illegitimate one's phony Electoral College "victory"!

[triron]

19. Yeah but naysayers will insist 'unadjusted' exit polls are not accurate (since 2000 only).

[Kid Berwyn]

45. A perfectly automatic reaction.

Clockwork, if not lemming, like.

[Baltimike]

16. final-FUCKING-ly. nt

[triron]

20. knr

[flibbitygiblets]

26. key lessons for the 2020 election are blacked out

So, we're doing nothing?

[BigMin28]

27. I believe that as much

as I believe tRump is a successful businessman.

[The Figment]

28. I've said this all along...

Many have called me a "conspiracy theorist " "wacko" or any number of things then they try to end the conversation by saying "prove it ".

If one took all the votes in the three states that gave the win to the Orange Cheatoleani and devided by the total number of counties in those same states you get what...a couple of hundred votes per county or so?

Easy Peasy for even a mediocre hacker!

[catrose]

32. I didn't believe it from the first time I heard it

[Kahuna7]

34. Same here. nt

[triron]

48. knr

[triron]

49. kick for visibility