A Modest Proposal for Keeping the Russians from Hacking Our Voting Machines
by John Lawrence, August 3, 2018
Disconnect them from the internet, dummy. Go back to paper ballots. Vote by mail like I do in California. Fill in the bubbles, and then an automatic scanner (not connected to the internet) can tally them. Why the need to connect voting machines to the internet in the first place? It seems pretty stupid. A simple phone call could tell the results to whomever needs to be told. There is no need for the internet to be involved whatsoever.
Yesterday "top Washington officials" vowed to do whatever is necessary to protect our elections from Russian hacking. The answer is simple. Disconnect voting machines from the internet. I'll say it again.
The New York Times reported:
But the men and women charged with detecting and defending against any threats to the American political process showed no such ambivalence. They bluntly said that Russia was behind a “pervasive” campaign to weaken America’s democracy and influence the 2018 election.
They also sought to reassure voters that federal, state and local governments were taking steps to guard against what Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, described as a “24-7 365-days-a-year” effort by Russia to sow division as Americans head to the polls in the fall.
Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, echoed that assessment, saying that “Russians are looking for every opportunity, regardless of party, regardless of whether or not it applies to the election, to continue their pervasive efforts to undermine our fundamental values.”
Undermine our fundamental values? Just what are those fundamental values, Mr. Coats, that Russians are seeking to undermine? The right to call your opponent "crooked Hillary"? The right to denigrate, humiliate and demonize your opponents? The right to lie to people to get yourself elected? The right to create false scenarios and accuse your opponent of crimes and then have it repeated ad nauseum over hate talk radio, TV and the internet?
The article continues:
Mr. Wray and Mr. Coats were joined at the briefing by Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, John R. Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, and Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of the National Security Agency.
Officials at the briefing did not describe specific threats to the coming elections, and they were vague about how the government was responding to what they called Russia’s interference campaign. But they said Mr. Trump had directed them in a National Security Council meeting last week to aggressively confront the threats.
“Our democracy itself is in the cross hairs,” Ms. Nielsen told reporters. “The progress we have made is real, and the nation’s elections are more resilient today because of the work we are all doing. But we must continue to ensure that our democracy is protected.”
Ms. Nielsen said the government had “seen a willingness and a capability on the part of the Russians” to hack into the American election infrastructure, including voter rolls and voting machines. In addition to helping states and local governments prevent that hacking, she said her department was working to ensure that methods were available to validate the vote if a cyberattack occurred.
Vague about how the government was responding? What's vague about disconnecting voting machines from the internet and making them unhackable? Validating the vote if a cyberattack occurred? These folks are total alarmists. By now we should all be aware that the internet is full of holes. It is not secure so why do they insist on using it? To justify bigger increases in the Homeland Security budget? Methinks they protest too much. It's like Jimmy Carter said, "The energy crisis is real." Emphasis on "real". Sure it was, but Jimmy was overwrought, and so are Ms. Nielsen and the others. Just disconnect the voting machines and problem solved.
As for the ads supposedly taken out by Russians on Facebook, I doubt if they could do any more damage than Republicans and their operatives and trolls have already done to the democracy by spreading false rumors. These folks are determined to maintain Russia's enemy status to justify large increases in their budgets and the budget of the military-industrial-intelligence-homelandsecurity complex.
