Why Can't Russian Elections Be Hacked?

[Me.]

Have Putin lose the next one. It would be plausible as the country is in huge disarray, unsettled. The people are very unhappy. I don't kid myself that he would step down but it would cause big problems for him and who knows what the result would be. Time for America to fight back.

[nycbos]

1. Because Russians elections are neither free nor fair.

[roamer65]

2. .

[sarah FAILIN]

3. You can't hack what doesn't exist

No matter who is on the "ballot", Putin will win. No hack possible when the vote has no affect on the outcome.

[dalton99a]

5. Precisely.

And dissidents are severely dealt with

[Pholus]

4. Easy Answer

Putin, an ex-KGB guy, knows his Stalin: "I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."

You can't hack a system already hacked at its highest levels.

On the other hand, perhaps we should get into the "Fake News" business on the Russian internet. But Trump does not have the will to do that.

[mwooldri]

10. Don't need to get into "fake news" business.

If the truth is reported time and again from a particular establishment... And it's regarded as being credible... Then people will think "If 'XYZ news' says so, it must be true.". As long as there are internal and external means to keep said organization in check then we can use the truth as a weapon against fake news.

[Pholus]

16. Oh, I was talking about doing this back on the Russians....

Not that it would be as effective, but I think it would be good for us if some of Russia's ample "Information Warfare" forces were forced to be held back to play defense.

[marylandblue]

6. I believe the USA is the only country in the world that doesn't use 100% paper ballots

[Warpy]

11. Very true, Russia hasn't been stupid enough to try DREs

although considering the extensive ballot box stuffing going on over there, I have to wonder why. It's much harder to subvert an election using paper ballots as long as there is a strong opposition party to count them and totals are checked very carefully with local voting rolls and the record of who many people voted that day. Russians don't do these things.

Getting rid of those damned DRE machines should be a top priority in this country. Until we do, our elections are a total sham.

We've known about this since the stolen election of 2004.

[mythology]

14. What are you talking about?

Brazil has used only electronic voting since 2000. Parts of Canada vote over the internet. Estonia has internet voting. EU Parliamentary voting can be done over the internet. Switzerland allows expatriots to vote over the internet.

[DonViejo]

7. Old joke...

Did you hear someone broke into the Kremlin and stole the results of next year's election?

[dalton99a]

8. +1

[Chasstev365]

12. LOL! Sounds like a Georgia (USA) Special Election

[BainsBane]

9. They are pre-hacked

by Putin.

[L. Coyote]

13. They already are rigged. Why do you think Putin is President?

Not because of popularity.

[Me.]

15. Of Course I Know That

But my point is why can't we overwhelm him with disruption and cause questions to be raised, make it as hard and bad for him as he's been doing to us. As I said, in the OP, he won't step down, but he's dealing with such an angry country that he recently spent four hours answering citizens questions and trying to reassure them things will get better, which we know they won't. Because, besides making himself and the other oligarchs rich, messing with our elections and ordering all the recent assassinations...he's as bad at his job as 45. Retaliate!

[Xolodno]

17. It was... that's how we got Putin.

The drunkard Yeltsin, and by preponderance, IMF Russian loan holders picked Putin to succeed him. Putin was a nothing mid level former balding KGB Agent who was unassuming and whose political career wasn't of much notice. But he was a guy who could keep the trains running on time and thus assumed to be easy to control via corrupt oligarchs and the IMF.

But like overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran, it backfired. Putin was not only ambitious and a nationalist, but, just as corrupt as an oligarch....and other oligarch's were his competition. By his second term, he did get the train's to run on time, but was also on the cusp of paying off all the IMF loans, which it did a couple years later. Which is impressive given it was at one point the largest debtor of the IMF.

He won a second term via suppression of opposition voters which was "legal" no thanks to Yeltsin...and sad to say supported by western powers who backed Yeltsin at the time, but to be honest, he probably didn't need to do that. He would have won either way, but he has a paranoia of the west which has emboldened him. Hence ballots in Russia are all on paper, intelligence services are not connected to any network, etc. He's developed techniques to keep power and found ways to disrupt opposition power....which is now being exported.

His third term election was obviously a farce, but, sad to say, corrupt people enabled that to happen and Putin took full advantage.