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Hack Job
Author: BobR    Date: 08/02/2018 13:11:48

The 2000 election is mostly known for the vote count showdown in FL (and ultimately - the Supreme Court) which resulted in not all of the votes being recounted, and Dubya getting appointed elected president. This precipitated a move away from "physical" voting methods (to eliminate hanging chads, etc) to electronic voting machines. The 2002 election was the first large-scale debut of the voting machines, and - from some reports - the test run for hacking the machines (somewhere, I have am encrypted zip file that purportedly contains the hack that stole the GA Senate election from Max Cleland). When Dubya was re-elected in 2004, there were widespread reports of voting machines changing votes, and concerns of hacking.

In 2008, liberals turned out en force to assure that - even with hacking - the election would not be stolen. President Obama won that election and his reelection.

When the 2016 election rolled around, there were still plenty of the old-technology hack-able voting machines (and vote tallying servers) scattered across various states. This time reports of hacking (and possibly admission from Putin himself) came from outside our borders. In addition to traditional electronic hacking, Russia did psychological hacking, flooding our social media with junk made to look like news, aimed at stirring up resentment, polarization, and hardened opinions based on lies. All in all, it appeared to be enough to give tRump the edge in 3 key states.

So here we are in 2018, looking at a mid-term election, and a little wiser, but wondering just how much we can trust the results. The stakes are pretty high. The poisonous id released by tRump has unleashed a trove of voters and candidates who are just plain disgusting. Here are 7 of the worst. Russia is still trying to meddle with the election; whether they succeed on the traditional electronic side remains to be seen.

What's scary is that they've breached the defenses of the U.S. power grid. Major power outages on election day - that would really throw things into turmoil. That may be too obvious for Russia, though - they are more insidious than that. Destroying the U.S. from the outside would reflect badly on them. Getting us to destroy ourselves from the inside would be more satisfying for Putin, and he could claim innocence.

It's way past time we took a long hard look at cyber-security - especially as it relates to elections and other vital functions. Republicans, however, are benefiting from the hacking, so why should they try to stop it? It seems the Republican party has already been fully psychologically hacked.

Vigilance!
 
 

19 comments (Latest Comment: 08/02/2018 22:44:10 by livingonli)
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