Russians in Dallas County
Come to find out, Dallas County voter data files were hacked by Russians. Dallas is a blue county in a red state. Oddly, no surrounding heavily Republican counties got hacked.
Y’all, how would Russians know which counties to attack in Texas? There has to be a local connection. Somebody who knows which parts of Texas are blue had to be involved.
(By the way, I’m on a mini vacation but will check in from time to time.)
According to NPR this afternoon, the Homeland Security people went to all the states to tell them what was going on, but 16 [if I heard right] said we don’t want you looking at our voter filed. So…is there a reason? Paranoia isn’t a good answer.
1According to NPR this afternoon, the Homeland Security people went to all the states to tell them what was going on, but 16 [if I heard right] said we don’t want you looking at our voter files. So…is there a reason? Paranoia isn’t a good answer.
2Enjoy your vacation and I will be in my best behavior while the Astros beat the damnyankees next week.
3Rachel Maddow just did a great piece on this. As usual, she spells it out patiently.
4I believe it is naïve for people to assume there was no attempt to influence the vote tally. The more we are told by the grand poohbahs of voting, the closer we get to seeing exactly that possibility.
The software which runs voting machines may not be connected to the Internet, live on election day, but it is written by a developer and it is installed on each machine. Voting totals can be influenced by the software that records and reports them to some data center.
In the 2014 general election early voting, for instance, I pulled the old virtual lever and voted straight ticket Democrat. Instead of turning around and walking out of the booth, I decided to manually check the individual races. Far down on the list I found one democratic candidate whose box was not checked.
I called the Party Chair shortly thereafter and told him, and he made excuses for the hard working ladies in the Election Clerk’s office. I suggested he file a lawsuit to bring immediate attention to the matter, and he said the Party couldn’t afford it, and I guess he went back to sleep.
It happened, I promise. Could have been a mistake or a test run of how to isolate vote totals in disparate races. At a bare minimum it shows that voting machine computerology is not perfect. And I also know if software is involved, whether on-line or loaded on a dumb machine, it can be manipulated, and I would guess the software guy from Florida who is now working for Cheeto Potus knows this. I’m just sayin’.
5It would be very easy for a hacker to interject a program/algorithm which changes enough votes to decide an election with a 2% favor for the preferred candidate, and never be noticed.
I have never felt comfortable with computerized voting and tabulation. Bring back paper ballots and dedicated Little Old Ladies to do the counting.
6Anything as slick as computerized voting has always nibbled at my consciousness. But, hey, I never got over the feeling of “magic” every time I walked into a darkened space and turned the lights on. Paper ballots? OK. As long as they never resemble anything ever used in Florida! And for heaven’s sake, much better security on the ballot boxes. I just hate it when they suddenly disappear and aren’t noticed until the party is over!
7“Somebody who knows which parts of Texas are blue…”
8That would be Repugs and Dems, but which party would want to screw with the Democrats’ votes? All fingers point to Rethuglican officials.
“Somebody who knows which parts of Texas are blue…”
9That would be Repugs and Dems, but which party would want to screw with the Democrats’ votes? All fingers point to Rethuglican officials.
Sorry for the repetition, I didn’t think my submission had gone through.
10What would be interesting is knowing the number of voters turned away from the polls, and their party of choice.
Screwing up the voting rolls would be easier and more discrete than hacking the actual vote tally
11Paper ballots? Electronic?
Question: How come I can go to any ATM in America and get a printed receipt of my transaction but this is too hard to do for voting nation-wide?
12From the Senate Intelligence hearing yesterday:
13http://crooksandliars.com/2017/06/i-know-voting-machines-can-be-hacked
Whoa up there, JJ: The AP story you link to says that hacking was attempted in the Dallas voter files, but that it was not successful. Do you have another source that counters the Dallas County elections administrator’s statement?
14(Sorry, I’m a retired editor, and I’m picky, picky, picky. And I’m a Dallas County voter, so I hope that the elections administrator is being straight with us.)
Mary – I am certain that I heard on Rachel last night that it was hacked 17 times. Now this morning I am hearing that Harris County was hacked. I’ll keep watching.
15MaryR, “hacking” is often assumed to result in changes. This is not always true; they could have looks around, and done nothing, or they could have copied everything without changing it.
A quickie audit of logins will tell you somebody was there, but not what they did.
16Last night Rachel Maddow described what happened in a North Carolina county whose voter rolls were breached, similar to those in Dallas. IIRC, it was the Raleigh-Durham area, one of the bluest counties in the state.
Lots of people had trouble voting, as the information on the voter rolls didn’t match what they had on their registration cards. They had extremely long lines and held voting open longer than usual in some precincts. I imagine lots of people got frustrated and left without voting.
Did that happen in Dallas? I dunno, but it implies, if not shows, that it’s not necessary to change the software that does the counting. Vote suppression works just as well, and the snacilbupeR are past masters of that.
Josef Stalin supposedly said that it doesn’t matter who votes. What matters is who counts the votes. Maybe Agent Orange’s buddy Vladimir could teach old Joe a thing or two about the modern world.
17I had the distinct pleasure of an autumn vacation in Denton Texas, October of 2008 centered around an organ dedication at NTU. This meant a lot to me, as the University of North Texas, as it was called in 1950 was where my parents met, fell in love and both earned their Bachelor’s degrees in music. I met a charming fellow named Jervis, (another damn flute player,) who had been very active in local politics for many decades, as well as a fellow organist who had recently had a new German style build dedicated in his honor at the local Methodist church. It was Dale, the organist who treated me to a trip to “El Guapo.” I know some of you Texans must know that venerable establishment.
I could clearly see that as a college town, Denton had stood apart as an island of sanity since time immemorial, but I had no idea that the entire County of Dallas tipped blue. We had some fun in the Lake District trying to find places that Mom and Dad might have visited by bus or bicycle fifty-eight years earlier. Wonderful town. Straw poll in the window of a local business clearly favored Obama for President over McCain.
18Work the polls and you’ll learn a lot. Why not have mail in ballots for everyone like some states do?
19And just for the record, Sweetwater (Nolan County) has been printing out the vote for each person for a lot of years.