In a recent posting I hypothesized that the voting machines in Georgia have been allowed to remain deliberately bad. [stderr]
No amount of cynicism is sufficient these days. We’re going to need to invent whole new forms of multi-methylated quantum-optimized cynicism:
Two days before Election Day, the office for Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is in a closely contested race for governor, announced Sunday it was opening an investigation into the state Democratic Party for a “failed attempt to hack the state’s voter registration system,” a move Democrats slammed as a political stunt.
“After a failed attempt to hack the state’s voter registration system, the Secretary of State’s office opened an investigation into the Democratic Party of Georgia on the evening of Saturday, November 3, 2018,” Kemp’s office said in a statement. “Federal partners, including the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation, were immediately alerted.”
But they’re investigating the Democrats not the Russians. So I’ll only take partial score on that one.
This site seems to have the backstory. This looks to me to have a reasonable chance of being correct. Your thoughts?
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/11/04/kemps-aggressive-gambit-to-distract-from-election-security-crisis/
Georgia is one of five states that doesn’t have a paper ballot back-up.
ahcuah@#1:
That account seems pretty consistent with system engineering, and it describes a very bad system. It also appears to correctly describe the interactions with the courts (so far). It appears that the way in which the security analysis was done are the problem – basically “we jiggled it a bit and parts started to fall off” to which the Republicans are charging the “jiggled it a bit” is hacking. That’s a fairly common reaction in computer security, trying to silence the analyst. In the case of these systems the article’s description of what was done sounds pretty minimal but they are downplaying it – grabbing a page’s HTML and looking for vulnerabilities is not hacking – exploiting them is – but there won’t be time to sort this in the courts.
It does not sound like hacking or even an unauthorized penetration test, though a bit of stretching could make it sound like the latter.
Surely it can’t be deliberate. Would the Republicans really set things up so that any sufficiently motivated lefty (or just someone with a serious love of irony) could hack a win for the Democrats by changing Republican voter data to keep them from voting, while at the same time claiming that the Democrats are wrong that the system is insecure?
Oh, wait, never mind. I think what I wrote above involves logic. I forgot you don’t do that in the U.S. any more.
Right now, the best way for the Republicans to abolish democracy in the United States would be to hack the vote in order to generate a few thousand extra votes for the Democrats. Then they “discover” that the vote has been hacked and announce that they are going to invalidate the results of the election “until the problem can be fixed.” Yet somehow, mysteriously, the problem never seems to be fixable, new elections are never scheduled, and the terms of embattled Republicans just stretch on and on.
Fortunately, this would require a certain amount of competence to pull off, and I’m not sure anyone near the top has a sufficient level. But if I was an evil genius, it’s absolutely something I’d attempt to do.
Curt Sampson@#4:
Would the Republicans really set things up so that any sufficiently motivated lefty (or just someone with a serious love of irony) could hack a win for the Democrats by changing Republican voter data to keep them from voting, while at the same time claiming that the Democrats are wrong that the system is insecure?
It’s win/win: if they win, the machines were accurate and if they lose, the machines were hacked and the election is invalid.
They forget that the last time they pushed things this far, it got a lot of them killed and ruined their little southern monarchy.
brucegee1962@#5:
Fortunately, this would require a certain amount of competence to pull off, and I’m not sure anyone near the top has a sufficient level. But if I was an evil genius, it’s absolutely something I’d attempt to do.
Maybe the Russians will help?
“Election machine putsch” coming right up.
BTW – the media pretended to believe some bullshit story about “dangling chads” but … give me a fucking break, I sure as hell don’t. That was an election-stealing operation and all it did was teach the Republicans “oooh, that worked!”
Marcus: One problem with your 11:29 post is I fear the Southern Disease has infested (or infected) the entire body politic (See Donald Trump).
The media is helping them pre-position their case:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-feds-have-logged-over-160-attempts-to-hack-the-midterms-since-august?ref=home
bmiller@#9:
Yeah, the US needed to do a full Ghengis Khan-style reconstruction after the war. “A stitch in time saves nine” and all that.
Unclear whether they mean the investigation or the attempted hack had limited success. My bet is it applies equally well to both.
I had the impression that the US government dealt with uncertain election results by shrugging and going with whoever the suspect ballot proclaimed to be on top. (C.f. Bush, Trump) Or does that only happen when it favours the Republicans?