Electronic voting machines are easy to hack

Source: XKCD

Electronic voting systems have long been vulnerable to tampering and hacking.  This has been known for more than 10 years, but little or nothing has been done about it.

Having a vulnerable system is like leaving your door unlocked or the keys in the ignition of your car.  Eventually somebody is going to take advantage of you.

If we Americans want to protect our voting systems from tampering, it doesn’t matter if the suspected tamperers are Russians, Republicans or somebody else.  We need written ballots that are hand-counted in public.

That’s only one of many problems.   Our election system is increasingly rigged to favor Republicans by discouraging or disqualifying voting by poor people, young people and people of color.

LINKS

How They Could Steal the Election This Time by Ronnie Dugger for The Nation (2004)

It’s Magic! by Greg Palast (2012)

How They’re Stealing Ohio: Vote machines audit function turned off—and worse by Greg Palast  (2016)

Justice Department Warns It Might Not Be Able to Prosecute Voting Machine Hackers by Kim Zetter for Motherboard [Added 9/31/2018]

How to Fight Voter Suppression in 2018 by Edward Burmila for Dissent Magazine.  Twelve ways in which voting procedures are rigged against poor people, young people and people of color, and what to do about them.

Did Trump owe his win to vote machine hacking?

Hat tip for the video link to Joseph Cannon.

Donald Trump got more votes than predicted by exit polls.  Was the problem the exit polls?  Or was it hacked electronic voting machines?

We’ve known for a long time that electronic voting machines can be easily hacked.

We know that in 12 states, Trump’s excess votes exceeded the margin of error.  There were four states—North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida—in which the Clinton won the exit poll and Trump won the vote count.  If Trump had not carried those four states, he would have lost.

Is this proof that Trump supporters stole the election?  No, but it is circumstantial evidence that needs to be investigated and explained.  It should not be let drop.

Can we have a fair election?

In a capitalist democracy, there are two sources of power—money power and people power.

These days money power is flourishing—partly because of court decisions that say spending money is free speech under the First Amendment, and that corporations have First Amendment rights, but more simply because of the enormous concentration of wealth.

At the same time, Republican state legislatures are rigging the election process through gerrymandering, and figuring out ways to disqualify voters, especially blacks, Hispanics and students, and make it more difficult to register to vote.

An analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice indicated that the reduction in the number of votes as a result of voter suppression laws in 2014 was greater than the margin of victory in the North Carolina and Virginia Senate races and in the Kansas and Florida Governorship races.

The Brennan Center can’t prove that the suppressed voters would have voted for the losing candidate, but that’s not the point.  Voting should be regarded as a basic American right.  If it isn’t, we Americans might as well go back to being ruled by hereditary monarchs and aristocrats.

Elizabeth Drew wrote that it is telling how few Republicans participated in the 50th anniversary of the Selma, Alabama, voting rights march.

Investigative reporter Brad Friedman reported electronic voting machines are an even more insidious threat to voting rights, because your vote can be canceled without your knowledge.   He told how easy it is to tamper with electronic voting machines without detection.  Internet voting is even worse.

The most costly off-year election in U.S. history

Some $3.67 billion was spent on the 2014 U.S. election campaigns up until 60 days before the election.  When the final figures are in, it will be more than $4 billion—making 2014 the most expensive mid-term election year in history.

Political scientist Thomas Ferguson, an expert on money in politics, explained the significance of that fact in an interview for the Real News Network.  My takeaways from the interview:

• The big money went predominantly to the Republicans, but Democrats got a lot, too.
• Republicans benefited from the low voter turnout, which was the lowest in many years.  They won with the support of probably 18 to 20 percent of American voters.
• The low turnout reflected disillusionment with both parties, but also, to an unknown degree, artificial difficulties in voting aimed at minorities, young people and poor people.
• The right-of-center Democratic leaders are Republicans light, and are more concerned with keeping control of the Democratic Party than defeating the Republicans.
• The election was a rejection of the failed economic policies of the Obama administration, but the result will be a return to the similar but more extreme failed policies of the George W. Bush administration.
• Americans are disillusioned with both parties.  American politics is due to get weird.

A lesser good is good, but a lesser evil is still evil

There is a thin but important line between saying that half a loaf is better than none, and saying that the lesser evil is better than the greater evil.

Circumstances alter cases, and there are tragic situations when the lesser evil is the only choice.   But people of good will should not allow themselves to be trapped into accepting lesser-evil-ism as a general rule of life.

The best may be the enemy of the good, but the lesser evil also is the enemy of the good.

When you settle for the lesser good, you still have good.  Achieving lesser goods may bring you step-by-step to the greater good you hoped for.

When you settle for the lesser evil, you still have evil.  Accepting lesser evils will bring you step-by-step to the greater evil you feared.