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American Democracy Is Now Under Siege by Both Cyber-Espionage and GOP Voter Suppression
https://www.thenation.com/article/american-democracy-is-now-under-siege-by-both-cyber-espionage-and-gop-voter-suppression/The same Republicans who benefited from Russian hacking in the 2016 election have been suppressing the vote for years.
It is now clear that Russian interference in the 2016 elections went far beyond hacking Democratic National Committee e-mails; it struck at the heart of America’s democratic process. “As of right now, we have evidence of election-related systems in 21 states that were targeted,” Jeanette Manfra, the chief cyber-security official at the Department of Homeland Security, testified at the Senate hearing.
Only two of those states have been publicly named: Illinois, where hackers stole 90,000 voter-registration records, including driver’s-license and Social Security numbers; and Arizona, where the voter-registration list was breached via a county-level infiltration. On June 13, Bloomberg reported that “Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states.” And The Intercept, citing a leaked National Security Agency report, stated that “Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election.”
“This was a well-planned, well-coordinated, multi-faceted attack on our election process and democ-racy,” said Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s counter-intelligence division, at the Senate hearing.
. . .
Halderman says the solutions are obvious: Record all votes on paper, perform routine audits of ballots, and conduct regular threat assessments, as is done in many industries. But the White House and Congress are doing less than nothing: President Trump regularly refers to reports of Russian hacking as “fake news,” and House Republicans voted to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission, the only federal agency that helps to protect states against hacking. “We’re doing way too little,” Norden says. “The intelligence community has their hair on fire saying the Russians are coming back, but there’s almost zero discussion in Congress about taking steps to protect our elections ahead of 2018 and 2020.” Things are hardly better at the state level, where in most cases there’s no money for new voting machines or added security precautions.
The truth is that the same Republicans who benefited from Russian hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign e-mails in the 2016 election have been trying for years to suppress Democratic-leaning votes. As civil-rights leader Rev. William Barber notes, “Voter suppression hacked our democracy long before any Russian agents meddled in America’s elections.” Since the 2010 election, 22 states—nearly all of them controlled by Republicans—have passed new laws making it harder to vote, which culminated in the 2016 election being the first in more than 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act.
Only two of those states have been publicly named: Illinois, where hackers stole 90,000 voter-registration records, including driver’s-license and Social Security numbers; and Arizona, where the voter-registration list was breached via a county-level infiltration. On June 13, Bloomberg reported that “Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states.” And The Intercept, citing a leaked National Security Agency report, stated that “Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election.”
“This was a well-planned, well-coordinated, multi-faceted attack on our election process and democ-racy,” said Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s counter-intelligence division, at the Senate hearing.
. . .
Halderman says the solutions are obvious: Record all votes on paper, perform routine audits of ballots, and conduct regular threat assessments, as is done in many industries. But the White House and Congress are doing less than nothing: President Trump regularly refers to reports of Russian hacking as “fake news,” and House Republicans voted to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission, the only federal agency that helps to protect states against hacking. “We’re doing way too little,” Norden says. “The intelligence community has their hair on fire saying the Russians are coming back, but there’s almost zero discussion in Congress about taking steps to protect our elections ahead of 2018 and 2020.” Things are hardly better at the state level, where in most cases there’s no money for new voting machines or added security precautions.
The truth is that the same Republicans who benefited from Russian hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign e-mails in the 2016 election have been trying for years to suppress Democratic-leaning votes. As civil-rights leader Rev. William Barber notes, “Voter suppression hacked our democracy long before any Russian agents meddled in America’s elections.” Since the 2010 election, 22 states—nearly all of them controlled by Republicans—have passed new laws making it harder to vote, which culminated in the 2016 election being the first in more than 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act.
