The 2018 election is at risk, and the Republican government is looking the other way
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Since September 2015, the Brennan Center of Justice at the New York University School of Law has been warning that America's voting machines are at risk. They are raising the alarm again, pointing out how vulnerable the nation's voting systems are to a cyberaThe 2018 election is at risk, and the Republican government is looking the other way
Since September 2015, the Brennan Center of Justice at the New York University School of Law has been warning that America's voting machines are at risk. They are raising the alarm again, pointing out how vulnerable the nation's voting systems are to a cyberattack. Say, from Russia. Or really any bunch of hackers, but with a Russian puppet installed in the Oval Office: Russia. The Brennan Center has found that despite manifold warnings about election hacking for the past two years, the country has made remarkably little progress since the 2016 election in replacing antiquated, vulnerable voting machines—and has done even less to ensure that our country can recover from a successful cyberattack against those machines. […] Since [2015], the Director of National Intelligence published a report detailing the ways in which Russia interfered in the 2016 election. In recent weeks, top intelligence officials have cautioned that foreign actors—including not just Russia, but also North Korea and Iran—may look to launch cyberattacks on this fall's midterm elections. The Department of Homeland Security, the Election Assistance Commission, and states and counties around the country have taken important steps in the last two years to secure our election infrastructure. But in two critical areas, the Brennan Center finds, the country has been remarkably slow to act: replacing voting machines most vulnerable to hacking, and mandating post-election audits that would allow the country to detect and recover from successful cyberattacks against those machines. In the 2016 election, some jurisdictions in 44 states were using technology that's at least a decade old. This year, it's 41 states that are operating with systems that are at least a decade old, «and officials in 33 say they must replace their machines by 2020.» Forty-three states are using machines that aren't even being manufactured anymore, so finding replacement parts and technicians who can work on them is difficult. «Several election officials have told the Brennan Center they scavenge for spare parts on eBay, and even there, many of the parts are no longer available.» The states can't replace those machines without funding, funding that's not a priority from the federal government. Meanwhile, the intelligence community is unanimously telling the nation that Russia is actively working to interfere in the 2018 election, and state elections officials are at a loss as to what to do about it. The administration isn't giving them any of the information they need to combat that interference, and the Republican Congress apparently just doesn't care. Not only does Republican leadership not care, they're standing in the way. Read more