In 75 years the U.S. government will issue the real report about the Russian hacking that put Donald Trump in the White House-- and Facebook was just a small part of it. Voting machines weren't. No, they were a big part of it, almost all of it-- in key precincts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, perhaps Florida, Ohio and Iowa as well. So let's re-assemble in 2091 and go through the nuts and bolts of the stolen election no government could ever release today without completely undermining our democracy-- a Putin goal-- and which a new Ipsos poll shows just half Americans (51%) believe is based on fair elections. They sense something is rotten in the state of Denmark Waukesha, but they don't know what it is.
I was telling this to a friend yesterday and he insisted that voting machines can't be hacked. He's a smart guy, a school teacher who pays attention and follows the news closely. So how come he didn't know? Do you know? Voting machines are very hackable. People-- including really smart people-- don't understand that so-called voting machines "not connected to the internet" can certainly be hacked-- and have been, over and over again.
It's been written about many times but never enough times, because people seem impervious to it. This week, Kim Zetter explained it for Motherboard readers. "Remote-access software and modems on election equipment," wrote Letter, "'is the worst decision for security short of leaving ballot boxes on a Moscow street corner.'" Election Systems and Software, the nation's top voting machine maker admitted in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) that "the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them." Previously ES&S had vigorously denied they had done that. This was the old line-- as told to the NY Times in February: "None of the employees… including long-tenured employees, has any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software."
If I were a GRU officer with an unlimited budget and an order to make sure Donald Trump wins the election, election-management systems, are exactly what I would hack into-- especially in key flippable counties in states like... oh, let's say Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, perhaps Florida, Ohio and Iowa.
Motherboard contacted two of the top vendors-- Hart InterCivic and Dominion—to verify this, but neither responded. However, Douglas Jones, professor of computer science at the University of Iowa and a longtime expert on voting machines confirmed that other companies did routinely install remote-access software during this period.
All of this raises questions about how many counties across the US had remote-access software installed-- in addition to ES&S customers-- and whether intruders had ever leveraged it to subvert elections.
The company didn't respond to questions from Motherboard asking when these customers removed the software-- whether ES&S had instructed them to do so back in 2007 when the company says it stopped installing the software on new systems it sold or whether it had only recently told customers to remove it following concerns raised in the 2016 presidential elections that Russian hackers were targeting election networks in the US. As late as 2011 pcAnywhere was still being used on at least one ES&S customer's election-management system in Venango County, Pennsylvania.
Like I said... meet you in 75 years when they open the files. Drinks are on me.
If only there was some printing genius out there who could figure a way to vote by paper ballots?
We should be asking Progressives to eliminate HAVA and force a return to hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots.
LOL The only "hacking" that took place in 2016 was the Democrats nominating the biggest "hack" they could find.
Paper ballot are the only unhackable system and yet we don't hear the Democrats clamoring for it. Could it be because they were doing the hacking in the primary against Bernie as the exit polls suggested?