Remember how the reporting on Russian intel’s attempt at US vote-diddling began? On Twitter, Soonergrunt sums it up:
First it was “they never got into any states”
Then it was “they got in but couldn’t access voter info”
Then it was “they saw voter info but couldn’t do anything.”
Now it’s “they could but didn’t do anything”
Next it’s…
“They could but didn’t” is where we are now, according to reporting from The Times on a Senate Intelligence Committee report released yesterday:
While details of many of the hackings directed by Russian intelligence, particularly in Illinois and Arizona, are well known, the committee’s report describes a Russian intelligence effort more far-reaching than the federal government has previously acknowledged. 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. While the report is not directly critical of either American intelligence agencies or the states, it described what amounted to a cascading intelligence failure, in which the scope of the Russian effort was underestimated, warnings to the states were too muted, and state officials either underreacted or, in some cases, resisted federal efforts to offer help.
The next shoe will drop. Eventually.
JGabriel
NY Times via Betty Cracker @ Top:
Hmm, seems like someone should let the Times know that Mitch McConnell is not a state official, but a federal official.
JPL
Expect if a dem wins they will blame Russia
SFAW
@JGabriel:
Do they/we know which states those were? [Sorry, but I’m not going to give the FTFTFNYT any clicks or $$]
JGabriel
You know, every time I see a picture of McConnell, he looks more and more corrupted. Someone should write a book …
ruemara
I do wonder, if there are history books, will this be called the coup that it is with an illegitimate government or, will we bow to the national ego and pretend that it was just a bad guy and nothing could have been done, oh well.
JPL
@SFAW: GA accused Obama of trying to rig the election
SFAW
@JPL:
I expect I’m not the first, but: I wonder if Russia would throw some not-insignificant number of Dem votes into the mix, as a way, as a way to rile up the RWMFs who jerk off to the idea of “2nd Amendment solutions,” leading to some level of chaos. That’s pretty much been Putin’s MO.
currants
This makes me nauseous.
Last year I read a handout the Swedish government put out (updated in May of this year). Can’t miss–even if I can hardly bear to think about the consequences of–the difference between their government and ours on this issue.
SFAW
@JGabriel:
You should see the picture in his attic. But only if you have a strong stomach.
SFAW
@JPL:
In 2016? Or one of his own?
oatler.
Clogzilla McConnell is HELLbent on destroying the country, and you bet that’s a hangin’ offense.
rikyrah
Those of us who said this from the beginning were conspiracy crackpots.
Uh huh
Uh huh
ccl
JGabriel
Make that Moscow Mitch, please.
smintheus
The fact that the Senate report is redacted in the extreme doesn’t give much credence to its attempts to downplay how successful Russia was in affecting the vote count. There are entire sections of the report that are completely blacked out, including their subject lines. For ex., the section describing Russian attempts to get permission to place Russians inside polling precincts as ‘observers’ is redacted almost entirely, and then the very next section is redacted so totally that we can’t even guess what it concerns.
Also, frequently references to Russian hacking of specific states is cloaked by refusing to name the states in question (the report instead refers to them as “State 4” etc.).
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: I wonder that too. We speculate a lot around here, but I have no idea how deep this goes and how directly complicit all of the beneficiaries of Russian interference were.
JPL
@SFAW: 2016. The Secretary of State Brian Kemp. He’s now governor
Paul W.
Nadler seems to have had enough, and with Pelosi’s blessing is kicking off the impeachment referral process with a suit to obtain grand jury documents.
From Lawrence Tribe:
The House has informed the federal court that it is now “conducting an investigation whose purposes include determining whether to recommend articles of impeachment.” As the petition says, “that is more than sufficient for purposes of Rule 6(e)’s ‘judicial proceeding’ exception.”
Off topic, can someone post another thread about the NYC meetup tomorrow? I need some deets so I can make sure to go to my first one!
MomSense
It would help if our pundits and journalists had the first clue about how voting works.
You don’t have to change the vote tallies to change the results. Causing delays because precincts can’t tell if people have already voted or not (as happened in NC) will mean that people who cannot wait, because they have work or other commitments, will not be able to vote. That changes the results. Changing or somehow deleting the voter file data thus preventing people from being allowed to cast their votes, changes the results. I also think it’s impossible to determine in most cases whether or not vote tallies were changed so saying they found no evidence vote tallies were changed is really misleading. Russian hacking changed the results of the election.
SFAW
@ccl:
I’m partial to “Traitor Turtle,” myself.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
Yeah, I’m not surprised that the one state named in the story is one with two Democratic senators that also tossed their Republican governor out on his ear in 2018.
I will believe until the day I die that votes were changed in Michigan with the connivance of local Republicans even if the proof never surfaces.
SFAW
@JPL:
I would love to see THAT lying, racist, fascist motherfucker dragged out of the governor’s mansion in shackles.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JGabriel: Proof the picture in the attic doesn’t always work.
rikyrah
While I am upset about Illinois, the thing is, Illinois is a same day registration state. You can go to the precinct near your house and register and vote on Election Day. I’m more interested in those states that if you get removed from the roles, there’s no corrective action that can be taken.
zhena gogolia
@JGabriel:
Well, in Oscar’s version, Mitch would be just as handsome as ever, but the portrait upstairs . . . .
RepubAnon
Ron Wyden noted that they didn’t do any forensic analyses of the hard drives to look for evidence of successful hacking, so how can they be sure none occurred?
Plus, with no paper trails, how can any allegations of hacking be either confirmed or disproven?
My guess is that the Russians will primarily look at corrupting selected voter registration databases. Imagine the howls if Trump voters show up, and are told they’re not registered to vote? Sure would come in handy for the Fox Noise machine election coverage if Trump looks to be losing in 2020…
Ocotillo
I think the only way to get the GOPers to take this seriously is if there begins to be evidence the Chinese and/or Iranians are also doing their meddling, only their “rooting interest” is to help Democrats. Maybe, just maybe they might give a damn then. Otherwise McConnell sees foreign interference as a feature, not a bug.
zhena gogolia
Always read the whole thread!
sukabi
I think that by exposing foreign hacking / vote tampering a bunch of local “little tamperings” will also be exposed…which is why it’s been almost 20 years since the first alarm was sounded – and ignored – by both parties and all election officials, inspite of kids and others with mid-level coding skills being able to demonstrate in real time the ease of hacking the vote.
SFAW
@MomSense:
OH SecState Ken Blackwell did something like that in 2004. It may have given Bush the victory. Minimal voting machines in heavily-Dem precincts, etc.
Betty Cracker
@Paul W.: Watch this space; a NYC meetup post is scheduled for this afternoon — saw it in the backroom.
Zinsky
The trouble is that you never get credit for what might have been. Obama probably saved us from another Great Depression, but he gets ZERO credit for that, because we don’t know HOW BAD IT COULD HAVE BEEN!
Omnes Omnibus
Okay, what was the mechanism for changing the votes? In WI (the only system I know well because I worked for the agency that oversaw elections at the state level), messing with the count would be hard. All machines must produce a paper trail and the most common machines scan paper ballots that were marked by the voter. The machines are tested before the election and then sealed. Following the election every municipality audits their results and a percentage of them are audited by the state. The machines are never connected to the Internet.
The fuckery in WI was the voter ID law. It wasn’t votes were changed; it was that citizens were prevented from voting.*
*Don’t try the Waukesha County faked votes thing. I have linked to the state and independent investigation reports many times over the years. That isn’t what happened.
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
Well, he IS as handsome as he ever was.
prostratedragon
@JGabriel: Opens up a new interpretation of the term “self-portrait.”
Fair Economist
No way is it a coincidence they won’t mention the other state they know the Russians broke into the database. That state must have had results altered and they don’t want the statisticians proving it, along with the followup investigations. I’ll bet it had a competitive Senate race too (no single state would have changed the Presidential outcome but getting in a Senator would make a big difference.)
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Although it ended up not making any practical difference, thank FSM that Ari Berman was there to document a lot of the fuckery. In some ways, his work was as important — maybe more so — than David Fahrenthold’s.
Fair Economist
@JPL:
Remember it’s always projection with them.
Another Scott
@JPL: The often reviled NPR ATC show yesterday with the often insufferable Ari Shapiro actually had an interesting segment yesterday with a guy who used to be involved with security at Facebook. Linky:
Excellent points. :-(
It was a well-done segment. I was surprised.
The report and video of a discussion about it are here.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Also see Georgia, Florida and Pennsylvania.
My own personal theory is that the test run for this were the Kansas state elections the year before. The results didn’t match ANY of the state polling.
germy
@JPL:
But they love Russia. Won’t they blame China instead?
Or do they love China now, too? I can’t keep up….
AliceBlue
@SFAW: You and me both.
germy
Jay
Jay
Jay
rikyrah
@SFAW:
Once again, the number of people – our regular Democratic Voters – who were denied the franchise…
DUE TO VOTER SUPPRESSION
IN WI, MI and PA…
was at least 3 times the margin of Dolt45’s ‘victory’ in each state.
These were dependable Democratic voters denied their right to vote.
I believe it would have made a great deal of difference.
different-church-lady
@JGabriel: In about 10 years time he’s going to look worse than Gollum.
Haroldo
@MomSense: @Omnes Omnibus:
I think you both have outlined very probable mechanisms working nicely in concert. If the Russki one don’t get ya, the State Lege will.
West of the Rockies
@SFAW:
I hope he knows people laughingly call him turtle. I hope he knows that he has a weak little chin, no jawline, and filmy, dull eyes. I hope it hurts in a deep, ego-crushing manner. I really do.
H.E.Wolf
I share the worry about past and future vote tampering and voter suppression.
At our individual levels, I doubt we can prevent vote tampering. What we can influence at an individual level is improving voter registration and increasing voter turnout, in as many places as possible.
There is an old proverb: “Pray to god and keep rowing to shore.” Here are a few places to start, if you are looking for a rowboat.
With thanks to the Jackals who originally mentioned these groups:
Postcards To Voters is in the process of writing to Democrats county-by-county in Florida to urge signing up for Vote By Mail, in addition to supporting individual Democratic candidates in multiple states. (Florida folks, if you get a postcard, let us know!)
VoteRiders raises funds to help pay for IDs for people who need them and who do not have sufficient funds themselves.
Spread The Vote is doing the same in the Southeast US, and concentrating on low-income and other disadvantaged voters, particularly voters of color.
There are many of us across this country who are praying and rowing for all we are worth. The more who do so, the more it helps. I think it will help to bring about victories.
different-church-lady
I’ve been saying it since the election. One day it’s going to come out. It may be long long after Trump is dead, but it’s going to come out.
SFAW
@West of the Rockies:
I don’t give a shit about that — unless it drives him to confess his crimes. Since he has proved that he has no shame whatsoever, this seems highly unlikely.
Kay
I think if you have a paper ballot this is hard to do. The ballot is numbered. There’s a corresponding number that is kept by the pollworker. If 1-100 ballots were issued, 1-100 ballots have to be there. We’re not counting the total universe of registered voters. We’re counting people who voted. There’s “spoiled” ballots but those are recorded. The ballots are scanned and the total vote in a precinct and then in a polling place (several precincts) has to equal the number of ballots issued.
I think they could quite easily change the voter file. That’s the county record where the lists of registered voters are. They could delete voters or change their address or name. But VOTERS would catch that, because if there were any substantial number of them they would raise hell “this is my precinct because this is my address”. And if they weren’t there to object they weren’t voting anyway, so they’re not in our universe of the count.
I suppose they could intervene as the votes are being collected. So electronic batches come in towards a statewide total and they shave off 136 or 1,136 from the statewide or House district wide total, but that’s in real time. That has to operate between the local paper counts and the electronic larger batches going towards the final total.
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
As I said: he’s as handsome as he ever was, and will continue.
ETA: In other words: are you telling us you think he looks better than Gollum today? Interesting drugs you appear to have ingested.
germy
@West of the Rockies:
I don’t think he cares about any of that. He’s got the love of a good woman! Elaine Chao! And more money than he could possibly spend in one lifetime.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: You and I (and a few others) have been saying this since November of 2016.
SFAW
@germy:
Does not compute.
Jon Marcus
@RepubAnon: Just FWIW, Illinois does have paper trails in most jurisdictions. Certainly in Cook County.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s just covering up that
Russ FeingoldHillary didn’t visit Wisconsin!BlueNC
@rikyrah: Similar issues in Durham, North Carolina (and perhaps elsewhere). Long delays because of problems finding registered voters in the lists. So…you happen to know that Durham is going to be an 80/20 split, D/R (second most liberal county in the state after neighboring Orange County, which contains Chapel Hill). For every 100 voters in Durham that end up not voting, that’s a loss of 80 D votes and 20 R votes. Worth it if you’re the R.
Look at this map:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/United_States_presidential_election_in_North_Carolina%2C_2016.svg/1280px-United_States_presidential_election_in_North_Carolina%2C_2016.svg.png
The margin in NC was 173K votes out of 4.55M cast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_North_Carolina).
There are about 200K registered voters in Durham County. (I think. Hard to find the exactly right statistic.) So you’re not going to—quite—swing the election by supressing 10% or so, but repeat that across the top 4-5 counties, and you might have something…
Another Scott
@rikyrah: Yup.
The bottom line is, we know why the GOP does all of these things: restrictive voter ID laws, redistricting, restricting voting days and hours, restricting the number of voting precincts and changing their locations, restricting the number of voting machines, putting out flyers with the wrong election day on them, etc., etc. They do these things because it changes the result from what a fair election would produce. The GOP knows that in much/most of the country, they can no longer win fair elections.
“To ask the question is to answer it.”
My assumption has been that the Russians didn’t want to and didn’t try to change any voting tallies. It’s too difficult (too decentralized, too many voting systems, too many people would have to be corrupted). They instead wanted to get data from voter registration databases and elsewhere to feed to the monsters at Cambridge Analytica and, (with a wink and a nudge) to Donnie’s campaign and the GOP, to target individual voters in critical states and make them less likely to vote for Hillary. Paper register tape from voting machines is important, hardening databases from outside access, and all the rest is important, but it won’t do anything to stop targeted interference like that. Not as long as Facebook (and too many others) will give out data (or let data be collected) from anyone who pays.
And Vlad and CA may not need any more data than they got in 2016. And given the continuing advancement of electronics, it would be even easier for them to individually target more people now.
We need to think carefully about the interference and its implications and not try to solve the wrong problem or learn the wrong lessons.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think different things were done in different states. Obviously since WI was already on a restrictive path with their voter ID, it would have made more sense for the Russians to fuck around with voter registrations.
The reason I suspect that Michigan changed actual votes is that Jill Stein got WAY more votes than any other state, and yet Democrats did well for statewide offices.
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
And Florida. Remember recent reports that the Feds have been conducting an investigation into “at least two counties” that were accessed by RU hackers…I’ve also long suspected some districts in PA and WI were tinkered with enough to flip for the EC.
I’m also leaning towards the “Putin Creating Unresolvable Chaos” theorists who say that RU could fuck with “all the things”–enough to keep key states from being able to certify their election results and thus declare a winner…could be the way Trump doesn’t have to leave even if he loses…
joel hanes
@SFAW:
Traitor Turtle
Drizzle-drizzle drazzle drome
Time for that one to go home
Ruckus
@MomSense:
You also have not enough voting machines for the number of people at a voting place. I’ve been subjected to this one in OH. Half as many machines with nearly twice as many precincts as the previous election at this polling station.
Kay
If it’s smaller numbers distributed it shouldn’t be that hard to find, because they could do a lot of spot audits. The smaller the number of votes changed the more they have to spread it out. So take Michigan. 20000/83 counties is about 240 votes per county, say 4000 precincts, uh, oh, that’s 5. Votes. Per precinct.
I am less sure than I was 5 minutes ago :)
Aaand it’s not even 20, it’s 10, so just getting worse..
TenguPhule
So close, yet so far.
SFAW
@joel hanes:
Hell?
frosty
@Jon Marcus: And PA doesnt, at least in my County.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
See #65. I was one of those in OH.
I have various ideas about things to do to Ken Blackwell. None of them are nice and state sponsored torture is illegal, and will never happen but just the concept that they should…….
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Wisconsin is a same day registration state. But in any case, my point here is that I think it was not possible to fuck with the actual vote totals in WI. I also think that it would be difficult to do that in any state. People looking to mess with voting would have the most success messing with voter registrations. And even that would not do much in any state with same day registration.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ella in New Mexico: Given what I said above, how were actual votes tampered with in Wisconsin?
rikyrah
@Kay:
Just think about all the folks who were denied the franchise IN DETROIT…
I assure you, it was more than 10,000 people.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Yeah, two machines in Schiller Park for all of German Village and at least six in Powell in 2004.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Well, too, knocking out 2.5 per precinct tampering with registrations is possible. I always thought they just went away when they were in the wrong precinct. My guess is most of them give up. I felt a real responsibility to buck them up and beg them to run the gauntlet. but I don’t know what happened after they left.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
I remember hearing about Blackwell’s fuckery at the time — I think I actually heard about on Election Day, but am not sure. Pretty vile.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
There are many ways to fuck with the vote, many states take it seriously and do things that make changing votes, at least in any significant way all but impossible. But many other states don’t do this and changing those votes is possible.
You are right that limiting who can vote on any particular day is the easiest way to rig voting. And republicans have been trying this in many forms for a while. Is it just me or do the states that vote fixing in one way or another seem to be more likely are republican?
SFAW
@Ruckus:
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a Dem state (i.e., Dem lege, etc.) that pulls any of that registration-suppression shit.
patrick II
@smintheus:
The abuse of classifying data for the illegitimate purpose of not informing Americans is widespread and harmful. The affected state officials know, The Russians know, and the Russians know we know, so protected sources are not an issne. There is no strategic reason for classifying much of this report except for keeping us in the dark.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Same polling place in 1996, 2000 and 2004. In 96 and 00 we had 4 machines and voting took at most 15 minutes. In 04 we had 2 machines and at least twice as many precincts. I know some of this because I spent just over 4 hrs, 2 of which were standing in the rain waiting to vote. We talked. I watched people wait for 1 hr, then 2 hr then leave without ever getting close to voting. One voting place and over that day a lot didn’t wait. I have no idea how many but it was significant, just while I watched. For 4 fucking hours. And all of it was fucking asshole Ken Blackwell.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
I can see why you’d want “certain things” done to him
Ksmiami
@oatler.: he deserves the fullest punishment for treason.
Emerald
@Ella in New Mexico:
Now there’s a thought. However, his term would be over. So would Pence’s. Thus, Nancy Pelosi would become President, amirite?
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Come on, Ruckus, it was just cold and drizzling during my two hours of standing in it. Or did you have more severe weather on the suburbs?
MomSense
@Ruckus:
Oh yeah, not enough voting machines is a classic voter suppression technique. Voter suppression was also a yuuge factor in 2016 especially in those midwestern states with new voter ID laws.
It was a perfect fucking storm of failed media coverage, Russian attacks, Republican voter suppression, and Jim Comey and the FBI’s NY field office shenanigans.
SFAW
@Emerald:
I don’t know if you are — but a boy can dream, can’t I?
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, but unlike Ruckus, you didn’t have to walk 20 miles, UPHILL, through the blinding snow, to get to the polls.
Omnes Omnibus
@joel hanes: The ‘Mats, Hold My Life.
Ruckus
@Haroldo:
1. See my posts above about OH.
2. I was prevented from voting in CA in this century because the county registrar said my mailing address for my permeant vote by mail ballot was not a residential address. I only found this out by going to the registrar’s office and asking. My question back to her was, “How does a homeless citizen vote?” She looked at me for a moment and gave me a ballot and made sure that I was registered.
Rant.
Every citizen 18 or older has a right to vote, unless they are in jail. (I didn’t get that until I was 21, the law changed. That year. Life’s a bitch. And then you die.) And once they are out of jail they have paid their debt to society and must have their voting rights restored.
That’s it, the whole enchilada.
They don’t have an address, they still get to vote. I don’t get to vote for a council member or a representative outside my district but I do get to vote for the one’s inside my district. I get to vote. And so does everyone else.
When I enlisted in the navy I took an oath. When someone is elected they take an oath. And none of those oaths are about restricting citizens from exercising their rights. I took my oath seriously, those elected to office or working for us should as well or be replaced and possibly jailed.
Rant on hold. May resume at any moment.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Yeah, I lived a block from the park, but the park’s rec center was on the southeast corner and I was coming in from the southwest.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
The FL lege might disagree with you.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wow. That’s about as close to “crawling over broken glass to vote” as I’ve ever read.
More or less.
Sab
@H.E.Wolf: re comment #50: Can you repost this comment every couple of months? This is important and will continue to be.
joel hanes
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Replacments and I are both quoting the old “Super Turtle” cartoon, in which our protagonist, one Tooter Turtle, gets himself into jams from which he can only be extricated by magic. He cries out “HELP ME, MR. WIZARD!” and his friend the wizardly dragon appears and sends Tooter to home and safety by reciting that couplet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJIQ6MYJ1Q
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
It wasn’t a fucking hurricane, nor was it snowing. It was more than drizzle. And standing outside in rather cool weather in a light rain for 2 hrs with a few runs of slightly heavier when it was done to fuck with all of us?
Now I know that you are fucking with me, because you stood in that same rain for some time to vote, which is how you know that it was raining and standing was done by many.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
And neither did I. I lived 3-4 blocks from the polling place and my job allowed a lot of leeway in being in the office, as I traveled more than 7 months of the year but rarely in November and December. Car didn’t even get warm getting to the polling place.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
JHC, work with me here, will you?
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Wonder why?
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Have you ever given me any reason to before now?
Or now?
And why did you use both my names?
SFAW
@joel hanes:
I am mildly embarrassed to report that, all these years, until now, I thought it was “Tudor Turtle.”
Maybe if I had watched it I woulda knowed.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Fair point.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: I am making light of it now, but it was a miserable situation and it set up to be that way because that neighborhood was one of Columbus’s most Democratic.*
*At least among the majority white neighborhoods.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Same day registration assuming you have an ID they’ll accept. I know you read the same horror stories I did about people getting the runaround while trying to get a voter ID in WI.
But, as I said, I don’t think there was vote switching in WI, though some of that happened there as well. I think MI had some actual vote switching because the numbers are so weird there. And I think Jill Stein went there to help cover it up, not to demand a recount or whatever it was she told people so they would give her money.
ETA: edited for clarity.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m sure it sucked. I can recall only one or two times when I’ve had to wait in the weather — which fortunately, was OK — since I’ve been voting. Living in NY and now MA, I figure we’re less prone to fuckery of the WI, FL, GA, NC, MI, etc.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: So now DHS can make sure absolutely no votes go un-tampered?
H.E.Wolf
@Sab:
Hmmm, hoom, maybe I will. :)
As it happens, there are a respectably large number of jackals who are vocal on this topic. Thank you all! Knowing you’re out there is one of the reasons I’m hopeful, in defiance of the dire daily details.
What I’d love to see, every couple of months, is a front-page post where lots of us, both lurkers and talkers (and I’m usually among the former), could share information on GOTV efforts: our own, or the efforts of organizations we’ve heard of.
Miss Bianca
@SFAW: Apparently you weren’t watching Saturday morning cartoons back in the 70s…
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
ALBERT[0] is a specialized lightweight IDS appliance (they say 1U or a VM). Way better than nothing, but it would be good if some states augmented it or used something else. And as lots of people are saying in this thread, there are many other ways to influence elections that don’t involve changing the minds of voters (e.g. voter roll purges, under-provisioning of voting machinery, etc). And changing the minds of voters though computer-driven micro-targeting is a newish thing, more or less grey area depending on methods, which are improving. I’m really happy that discussions about these scenarios are being mainstreamed; been freaking me out for years; one of the the quickest ways to one-party rule is massive election fraud, and false claims of fraud (including false-flag ops) are known to happen too.
[0]Albert Network Monitoring
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: There isn’t a lot of fuckery at the polls in WI. Municipalities run there own elections with support and supervision from the state. That means that the state cannot misallocate voting machines. From my experience working with the local poll workers, they mostly want to do things right and make sure that people who are eligible to vote can do so. The thing is voter ID laws change who is eligible and no amount of good will at the local level can change it.
J R in WV
I notice that the Senate committee offers no evidence whatsoever that they did NOT tamper with voter rolls… hmmm.
ccl
Ruckus SFAW
I was a runner that day, watching news, sharing info with the various groups active at the polling sites in our district, running errands etc.
I remember very clearly watching what was happening in Ohio with horror. Didn’t W fly to Ohio in the middle of the day – a sudden, unscheduled visit? I watched videos of the lines outside the polling places with determined folks standing in the rain long after the official poll closing (in line, can vote). I remember the tales of skulduggery over not enough voting machines and then the discovery of perfectly functional machines after the event.
My memory may be wrong on the details but I sure remember enough to agree with the idea that there was “fuckery” all get out at that time.
Ella in New Mexico
@Emerald:
If she runs again
If we keep the House
If Trump and Barr and whoever else is willing to become a fascist doesn’t declare a national emergency and suspend the Consitution
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
I wasn’t limiting “fuckery” to polling places and such, because I agree with you re: the WI voter ID fuckery, and it being (in my opinion, worthless tho’ it may be) the primary reason Hillary lost WI. Reading the Berman series was pretty disheartening
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
I’m pleasantly surprised that you think I’m that young.
Dopey-o
@MomSense: all the Russians have to do is scramble the voter registration records is blue precincts. The missing blue votes will never be counted before the electoral college installs Trump for his 2nd term.
Putin will sit behind his big fancy desk in the Kremlin and thumb his nose at any Americans who complain. Much like Scalia in Dec 2000.
Trump and Putin have too much at stake to allow any Dem to move into the White House in 2021. Too many crimes, too many dollars.