To the Editor,
The Mueller Report, on Wednesday, July 24, 2019, Robert Mueller testified before Congress about his investigation into Russian individuals with interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Given the success of its campaign to interfere in the last Presidential election, there’s little doubt that Russia will try its hand again. The foreign interference in the previous presidential election exposed cracks in the security of America’s electoral system, the most fundamental part of our democracy. News reports revealed that hackers working on behalf of the Russian government targeted state and local voter registration databases and managed to access elections systems in as many as 39 states. The attack shows that our current election systems are susceptible to foreign interference, and will only become more vulnerable as hacking methods are refined.
“The current FBI Director and the current Director of Intelligence has told us that Russia is getting bolder; that what we’ve just seen was a dress rehearsal,” said Senator Klobuchar, the ranking Democrat on the Rules and Administration Committee.
Alex Shephard reported; Perhaps it’s an understatement to say that the U.S. is equally vulnerable today. As bad as things were in 2016—as bad as they are now—it looks like they will only get worse. The business plan of a company like Facebook, which is dependent on monetizing user data, provides perverse incentives to do the bare minimum when it comes to protecting elections. While a Democratic House can be counted on to push for more robust enforcement and protections, Congress remains divided and the Trump administration has been unwilling to do much of anything to address the issue. We’re just months away from an influx of candidates for the Democratic nomination, which means we’re only months away from an onslaught of electoral influence operations. Time is running out.
Still, because computers make the election process so much quicker and cheaper, many voting jurisdictions and elected officials weren’t ready to adopt strictly paper methods.
“I think there’s a lot of people who don’t understand how computers work,” said Marian Schneider, the president of the election accuracy nonprofit Verified Voting. “They feel like if you can order a hoagie at Wawa or a meal at McDonnel’s [on a touchscreen], then you ought to be able to do something like that with voting.” Currently, some Election Boards are looking at “Touchscreen” a paperless touchscreen it’s easy for a hacked machine to cheat undetectably to give fraudulent results.
“If we do nothing, if we let the mechanics of voting continue to deteriorate, then I am one hundred percent sure that we are going to be attacked again in the fullness of time,” said J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan. “And it’s going to make 2016 look quaint by comparison.” Senate Republicans blocked two election security bills and a cybersecurity measure on Wednesday in the wake of former special counsel Robert
Mueller warning about meddling attempts during his public testimony before congressional lawmakers. Democrats tried to get consent to pass two bills that would require campaigns to alert the FBI and Federal Election Commission about foreign offers of assistance, as well as a bill to let the Senate Sergeant at Arms offer voluntary cyber assistance for personal devices and accounts of senators and staff.
Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require candidates for election for public office to refuse offers of assistance from foreign powers and to report such suggestions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and for other purposes. The U. S. House of Representatives passed a Bill to reduce the influence of big money in politics and strengthen ethics rules public servants, and for other purposes. The Senate has not scheduled the Bill.
Norm Halls
