Software Glitch or Russian Hackers? Election Problems Draw Little Scrutiny

[DonViejo]

Source: New York Times




By NICOLE PERLROTH, MICHAEL WINES and MATTHEW ROSENBERGSEPT. 1, 2017

The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November.

Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours.

Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before.

“It felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack,” Ms. Greenhalgh said about the voting troubles in Durham.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-election-hacking.html

[mnhtnbb]

1. I live in NC and was aware of this very early in the day.

When the returns started coming in on election night, Hillary was ahead by 150,000 votes in NC! Durham is one of the intensely blue--and also heavy
African-American--counties in NC. From the get go it felt like something funny was going on. This kind of crap never seems to happen in Republican
counties or districts, does it?

[They_Live]

2. k & R

These days I cannot think of anything more important than votes being counted correctly.

[Botany]

3. It was a coup and we had treason

"She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by
Russian hackers months before."

.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017454766


Felix Slater:
7:48 "Buddy, our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it.
I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this."

[ananda]

4. And yet, there were no consequences.

Will this problem ever be fixed by a Reep legislature?

I don't think so.

[BadgerMom]

11. After cheating to gain power

the Republicans are not going to set things right. We NEED the press to pursue this and put it front and center. Corporate media is killing us.

[renate]

5. I just don't understand why voting by mail isn't done everywhere

I mean, I understand that there are certain people who emphatically don't want it and I understand why. But I don't understand why public opinion isn't so solidly behind it that officials are forced to make it happen.

No time off work, no long lines, no finding child care, no trouble with parking... you can vote in the comfort of your own home. Why isn't voting by mail wildly popular?

[LiberalLovinLug]

6. Where are the freakin Democrats on this issue???

In Kenya, they didn't waste time. The courts overturned the election and they will have to have a re-do in a month.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029541398


Yet we hardly hear a peep from Democratic reps. They should be DEMANDING paper ballots going forward AT LEAST until the public can be assured that these machines are fool proof. Who know how many seats, how many Presidents ffs! that they have lost in the last decades?

[BadgerMom]

10. What you said.

[mjvpi]

7. Paper in 2020

Go back to the basics. If it can't be audited, we don't use it. Between the chaos of the Russian hacking, which was verified by our intelligence agencies, and the malicious use of Interstate Cross Check, coupled with unauditable and easily hack able voting machines, the computerization of our voting process has destroyed the integrity of our elections. Why have exit polls stopped working only in the US when we started using electronic voting machines? We have had a"Red Shift" in America ever since we started using electronic machines. Few things make me break out my aluminum foil hat like electronic voting.

[Sunlei]

8. as anyone can fill out registration forms/change address--someone---screwed with/changed voter regs

[BadgerMom]

9. K and R

Trump AND the RNC conspired with Russia and hacked the swing states Trump took by surprise and the slimmest of margins. That is the major reason Republicans want no investigation. All of them are guilty. While I'm glad reporters finally are researching this, I'm horrified it has taken this long and gets so little traction. Everyone is so circumspect, so dubious, so polite that our democracy is being stolen beneath our noses. Time to set some hair on fire.

[PatrickforO]

12. Which is why we need:

Automatic voter registration.

Paper ballots and locked boxes instead of anything that is hackable.

All general election days, including primary election days, should be holidays.

Caucuses need to be ended in favor of primaries.

The national popular vote initiative needs to be passed by enough state legislatures to circumvent the electoral college.

Districts defined by impartial groups based on census data; gerrymandering ended.

Overturn Citizens United.

Do these things and we'll de-fang Charles Koch and other radical libertarian billionaires who are systematically destroying all this nation stands for in favor of unrestrained capitalism.

A good book: Democracy in Chains, by Nancy McLean. Please pass the word because we must get the word out about what is really happening in this nation, and who is behind it.

[tinrobot]

13. Until stuff like this gets fixed, nothing changes...