As we all know the midterms are essential for saving our democracy.
However, there is renewed reason to worry about Russia meddling. From Politico in an article about Clapper:
One of his most serious concerns, Clapper said, is that Russian cyberspooks could use a wealth of knowledge gained from their intrusions of state electoral systems in the 2016 campaign to affect the actual vote this time around. There is no indication that Moscow deleted, manipulated or outright stole state voter data, he said, and “as best we can tell, there was no interference with voter tallies.”
“That’s not to say that they won’t resort to that in the future,” he said. “I don’t think they reconnoitered our voting systems for nothing.”
“In those cases where they reconnoitered voter registration rolls,” Clapper added, “my assumption was that they were just trying to get smart so that if they do it again, they will be a lot more subtle about it.”
Meanwhile, Congress is ignoring this threat. From WaPo: Russia will try again this fall. Congress doesn’t seem to care:
When top intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill one morning this week to give House members a classified briefing on the security of the upcoming elections, only 40 or so bothered to show up.
In other words, 9 out of 10 lawmakers thought they had better things to do than listen to an assessment of threats to the integrity of a closely contested midterm that is less than six months away.
“Well, it was at 8 o’clock,” Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) said.
even though the threat is real:
There is no reason to doubt that Moscow — and potentially other foreign powers — will try again this fall, when control of the House and Senate will be decided in hundreds of races across the country, surely by small margins in some places.
The Post recently asked 100 security experts — a panel put together from across government, academia and the private sector — whether state election systems are sufficiently protected against cyberthreats. Ninety-five said no.
Y’all know I am not generally looking to alarm people, but we need to do something about this.
And the good news is: we can.
Today is the day to call your congressional reps. Call your Senators (both of them). Call your Representative.
We learned from the healthcare fight now incredibly important our voices are! Let’s use them again TODAY!!
Call all three of your representatives and tell them it is clear from multiple, credible intelligence sources that Russia is planning to interfere in the midterm elections and you are distressed and worried that they are not doing enough about it. Ask them what they are going to do. Tell them that you want an answer emailed or mailed to you with an actual plan. Put their feet to the fire.
Here is what I said “Hi, my name is --— and I am a constituent of ---—. I am calling because I am extremely concerned about threats to election security going into the midterm elections. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said just yesterday that he has reason to believe Putin will try to interfere in the elections and may even tamper with votes and the Washington Post reports that a vast majority of independent security experts share his concern. Despite this, congress seems totally uninterested with only 10% of house members even showing up to a briefing. I am very concerned about this. If a foreign power can literally change our votes, what is left of our democracy? I’d like to know what you are doing to address this crisis. If you don’t have that information, I’d appreciate a follow up call, email, or letter. Thank you!”
feel free to borrow anything you want from my script.
I have all Democrats so they were super nice and did tell me some things they are doing. I encouraged them to do more and to do it louder.
Making all three phone calls too me less than 10 minutes. If we all take this action, we can make a difference.
Call. Encourage your friends to call.
Let’s take action and make a difference! With just 10 minutes of your time, you can help preserve our election integrity.
Here are phone numbers of Senators (or just google your Senators’ names)
Here are phone numbers of Congressional Representations (or just google your Rep’s name)
THANK YOU! Take 10 minutes to make a difference and then consider an additional few minutes to encourage other friends to call.
Do you have other advice on how we can address this? Put your thoughts in a comment. Any feedback from your reps after you called? Put that in a comment as well.