Voter Fraud, Voter Supression, Cyber Crime: What's the Bigger Threat to Democracy?

[bust]

Yes, I understand why they are doing it, but why would anybody with half a brain fall for it?

I have at least half a brain and deep experience in internet technology since when the founders of Google were still at Stanford. And I'm not predicting another hack before Tuesday. But it's not a matter of if another will happen, it's when. Russia has been using all kinds of mischief to try to discredit elections in Eastern Europe for years. Next time it might not be Russia; the whole world has a stake in who wins our elections. When it happens it's unlikely to alter any actual votes, but the opportunities to influence our voting behavior or and/or sow confusion are many and real.

How expert is your local county clerk's office on the topic of cyber security? What antiquated version of windows powers your voting machine? How impenetrable is the AP's vote count platform and API? Do any news organizations run a content management system with security vulnerabilities? What are the chances something like the recent DNS denial of service attack could happen again? How about a physical attack? The internet is dependent on cables and routers after all. Could a hacker release a doctored set of emails in the 11th hour before the election, providing no time to prove the disinformation isn't true? That one or something like it would be especially easy and potentially effective. It never ceases to amaze me what people are willing to believe.

None of this should distract us from the crucial issues at stake this election. And I think voter suppression could have at least as big an impact on the outcome as the hacks that have already occurred. But we should be vigilantly working to prevent more hacks from occurring, and ready for more last minute surprises if they do.

It's a likely goal of hackers to diminish confidence in our democratic process. So it's unfortunate we're discussing this in the first place: they're succeeding. Meanwhile Republicans incite fear about voter fraud as a pretext to erect barriers so some who are unlikely to support them don't vote. Trump bloviates about rigged elections to set the stage for more asshattery if he loses....

I can't wait for this election cycle to be over. Once it is we have some work to shore up our democracy to do.