Campaign Action
White hat hackers converged on Las Vegas last weekend for the Def Con hacking convention, and, at a "voting village" event, demonstrated just how easy most of the voting machines and elections systems used in U.S. elections are to compromise, CNN reports. Yet Moscow Mitch McConnell remains steadfast in his refusal to even consider elections security legislation.
In just a few hours, "one hacker was essentially able to turn a voting machine into a jukebox, making it play music and display animations." Another dismantled the brain of a machine using only her hands—no tools—and was able to reset it and make herself the system administrator for it. And it's not just the voting machines themselves. Russians gained access to voting databases in 2016 and used social media platforms to distribute disinformation. It's not an unjustified fear that they could conduct an information warfare campaign targeted directly at voters in specific states or counties.
The goal wouldn't even have to be disrupting the balloting process. An election could be undermined by attacking state election boards and using a coordinated campaign on social media to use the information hacked to spread confusion. "Obviously, we look at what happened in 2016 and what we should expect in the future is a two-pronged attack," says Noah Praetz, the director of elections for Cook County in Illinois. Alex Padilla, secretary of state in California, told CNN, "There's always been a concern about the integrity of our elections and there's always been a concern about misinformation, disinformation being disseminated around campaigns."
It will be much easier for that kind of social media attack to work at undermining the integrity of and the public's faith in our elections if people aren't certain that the systems are secure. Congress taking action and passing elections security legislation to do that would help. States and localities are doing what they can to respond to hacks and to secure their systems, but some additional federal help is critical both to secure systems and to show a united front against would-be hackers. And Russia.
Instead of that, though, Moscow Mitch is essentially inviting Putin and pals into the 2020 election. The idea of fair elections was thrown out the window by Republicans years ago, with voter suppression and gerrymandering and the installation of federal judges who are hostile to voting rights—with McConnell's blessing. All of that was un-American and unpatriotic enough, but now he's opening us up to attack by a foreign adversary. Just in hopes that his party will keep "winning."
This has to end. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats end McConnell's career as majority leader.