The problem there wasn't Russia, but a voting system where too many key features are privatized and managed by contractors protecting those trade secrets: the black box software running voting systems.
But back to the bigger picture. Nobody has found any proof that Russia accessed the separate computing systems that tallied 2016 votes, numerous consultants for state election officials and federal authorities have repeatedly told AlterNet. Yet in 2018 we are living in a world where the spread of misinformation reigns, whether it is coming from media seeking greater audiences and ad revenues because suspense and conspiracy sells, or whether it's amplified by Silicon Valley's giant content curators that have programmed their algorithms to elevate "edgy and hateful content [because it] is engaging," as an authoritative investigative report in the Guardian put it.
What's clear is who and what is on the losing end of this escalating dynamic: any citizen who believes in the hope of democratic institutions like elections, despite their numerous flaws, from clumsy bureaucratic injuries to partisan betrayals.
On Thursday, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School released a report declaring America's electronic voting machinery is "crumbling." The report red-flagged 41 states for systems that are more than a decade old, which is beyond the reliable lifespan of most computers, making "our elections more vulnerable to breakdown and malfunction, but to hacking as well." The Center issued a similar warning in 2015, calling on Congress to allocate several hundred million dollars to update the machinery. But that didn't happen then and it has not happened since, including in the two-year budget passed this week by Congress.
What Really Matters Now?
In today's world, beyond raising awareness about the dark side of the attention economy, little is being done to substantively counter the reality that propaganda and paranoia are outrunning the facts, reality checks and better, more nuanced, information. Silicon Valley giants like Facebook and Youtube might publicly decry the use of their platforms to spread propaganda and fake news, but they are not changing their targeted advertising systems that target and deliver that content and reap them billions every quarter. Meanwhile, shoddy reporting that uses conspiracy theories to generate viewer traffic isn't helping.
Whether incomplete reporting (Tillerson's warning) or distortions presenting nothing new (NBC), or paranoid speculation built on those vapors (Esquire), election officials contacted by AlterNet say these kinds of narratives are eclipsing the steps now being taken to make voting in 2018 more secure and to better audit vote counts. But those granular steps won't matter if the public doesn't believe the results and is quicker to trust what flies around cyberspace at the speed of light.
What's been happening, and what people may start hearing about in coming weeks as 2018's first primary elections approach in March, is the result of unprecedented cooperation between the Department of Homeland Security and states to protect voting from cyber attacks. What Tillerson was apparently referring to when he said Russia is already trying to interfere in 2018's elections, was government voting systems -- like computers across federal and state governments -- are constantly being probed and targeted by overseas adversaries. That may be escalating, but it's not a new trend according to a state election director contacted by AlterNet.
Beyond this new federal-state cooperation, which was launched by the Obama administration, the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) will soon issue new voluntary voting system guidelines, which set higher standards for cyber security and audits to make sure votes are accurately counted. While these standards are voluntary, most states follow some or all of them, and the private sector voting machine vendors typically adopt all of them.
Meanwhile, a handful of states, like Colorado and Rhode Island, are implementing better post-election audits. Other states are moving away from paperless voting, which Virginia did a few years ago. Louisiana is looking at this, dependent on funding, and so is Georgia, in a pilot project. Some of the pressure to do so -- echoing what election integrity activists have long argued -- is that the Election Assistance Commission push for better audits means using ink-marked paper ballots.
But back to 2018's elections and Russia. Unlike years past, better security and audits are the predominant focus for top election officials, who next weekend meet in Washington, D.C. The agendas for the National Association of Secretaries of State and National Association of State Election Directors both reflect this priority.
While it remains to be seen how effective these steps will be, it's a fact that it would be a colossal task to hack the statewide vote totals in a state like Michigan, with more than 1,600 different local and county election jurisdictions, each with separate voting systems, compared to targeting swing voters in swing counties on social media for edgy campaign messaging. (In Wisconsin there are 1,852 election jurisdictions; these are the two states that had the closest Clinton-Trump margins in 2016.)
In 2016, Russia's biggest impact was through propaganda, spreading messaging that pushed American voters' hot buttons, not tinkering with the machinery. That's why this week's microcosm, in which election hacking conspiracies eclipsed real news was noteworthy. It is a mirror of what's happening in our political and media culture, and points to the shape of things to come. In a year when midterm elections are poised to rebalance political power in America, undermining confidence in voting is the fastest lane to political chaos and unrest for Republicans to reject those results.
The stakes, as the ex-DOJ attorney said, "is people start doubting our own election system and they do not participate anymore. And it's what the election officials right now are fighting so hard against. They are working so hard to get the message out that they are on the job. They are working harder than ever. They are coordinating with the feds. They are trying to get the funding they need. So they can make sure that all future elections, even if the threat increases, that they can address it."
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