I am a news junkie. I have been running a news aggregate page on Facebook, on my own no less, for about 7 years. Every day I wake up, look over the news to curate the best news stories for the day. I publish about 10 on the page and in my news round-ups here. Needless to say, I read A LOT of news.
Because of that, it’s hard to surprise me. There are terrible news stories that leave me feeling deflated but unsurprised. With this administration, bigotry and misogyny are to be expected. However, once in a while, there is a confluence of news stories that really does make me take notice.
That happened today. I hope that once you’ve read everything, you too will sit up and say: “Holy Shit.”
The story is ongoing and continues to be updated.
This morning, NPR published an article. It wasn’t big or terribly shocking in and of itself. The headline was rather ho-hum. It was an article that discussed the concern that, despite what the Mueller Report showed about electoral interference, no one was going to take action. (Mueller Report Elicited A Lot Of Conversation — But Little Election Legislation) A lot of people are talking about the fact that, yes, there is evidence to believe that Russia interfered, but despite bi-partisan interest, no one seems inclined to DO anything about it.
What shocked me most, though, was that it isn’t just evidence in the Mueller Report. We KNOW Russia interfered. The FBI confirmed that they interfered in Florida in 2016. (Florida Governor Says Russian Hackers Breached 2 Counties In 2016) New governor DeSantis said he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, so he couldn’t reveal which two counties were hacked. That opens up a lot of other questions, but the online consensus seems to be that Broward, with all its irregularities, was one of them.
Leaving aside the fact that DeSantis is hiding information from the voters of Florida, we have to start looking at the timeline as well. Rick Scott (as governor) denied anything untoward had happened in Florida’s elections. In fact, that was a strong campaign point that Scott used to slam his Senate seat opponent, Bill Nelson. Nelson had come out and SAID that Florida was hacked. (Gov. Rick Scott Calls Russian Hacking into Florida Election Systems, “Unsubstantiated”) Scott was even able to produce a letter, signed by Kirstjen Nielsen and Christopher Wray, that said no hacking had occurred.
Scott went on to win his election against Nelson, and DeSantis defeated Gilliam in a close race for the Governor seat. 2018 Florida was filled with irregularities again, but most people passed it off as: “Florida.” (Sorry Florida, but you did give us Florida Man, Florida Woman, and the 2000 election cycle. Things haven’t really improved.) Since then, as we’ve seen, they’ve been soft-stepping the information out to the public. We’ve gone from there being “NO HACKING” (Scott) to “Hacking but no data breach” (Rubio) to “Hacking, and yes, data was breached” (DeSantis). They aren’t going to admit anything more than that because then they would have to admit that the elections were fraudulent and the numbers were changed.
At this point, it’s clear that Florida has some serious electoral problems. But, even worse than that, the Republican leadership in Florida and federally KNEW there were problems and hacking in 2016. And they did nothing to stop it from happening again in 2018. And they are taking no steps to prevent it from happening in 2020.
But it’s worse than that because it’s not just Florida. The same parent company owns the machines in Georgia as well. Diebold, which became Premiere Election Solutions, acquired Florida’s voting machine company. PES was sold to a company called “Election Systems and Software” (ES&S) before facing antitrust and monopoly issues and selling all machines and software off to Dominion Voting Systems. However, only the name changed, not the machines or the software.
Georgia, with all it’s election machine problems in 2018, got their machines from the same company. In fact, ES&S claims 60% of the US Voting Market share and runs machines in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. And those are just the places we KNOW about.
And what people also aren’t talking about is that it doesn’t have to be a huge difference to affect the direction of an election. Let’s go back to Florida. Broward County has 1,198,686 registered voters. (Florida Division of Elections) In 2016, voter turnout was 65%, up from 63% in 2012. (Ballotpedia) That’s a difference of 23,000 votes. In 2018, Florida had voter participation of 55%, up from the last midterm in 2014 of 43%. That is a voting difference in Broward County of 143,842 votes. For people who cast paper ballots, there is at least some measure of security. But how many cast votes on the DRE machines with no paper trail? And, since we know now that the data was hacked and breached, how do we know what those numbers actually are? If even a portion of those voting numbers were manipulated, how would we know?
When you consider the issues Georgia had in 2018, and how more and more areas are moving to electronic voting like Georgia and Florida, you have to question why something isn’t being done to stop it, especially since the Mueller Report has revealed it’s happening.
Mitch McConnell said: “We were ready in 2018.” No, he and the GOP may have been, they knew that the machines were hacked in 2016, and they probably knew how it happened and how to replicate it. But the voters were not ready in 2018. All those results should be called into question. All states should move to use only paper ballots until the machines can be independently verified as secure.
We are not ready for 2020. Not by a long shot.
If you appreciate this analysis, consider buying me a coffee on Ko-fi.com. It helps me continue to write, homeschool, and run the political news aggregate page.
Friday, May 17, 2019 · 2:32:56 PM +00:00 · Kittencaboodle
Panhandle county that backed Trump among Russian hacking victims -- More on the developing election hacking story. As a reminder, we've gone from "No, we didn't get hacked." to "We got hacked, but the data is fine." to "We got hacked, and they could see the data after all, but nothing was manipulated." to "We got hacked, the data was breached, and we can't say for sure it wasn't manupulated." Now, at least, we know one of the counties that was hacked.