Voting Rights: Massive Assault by Trump & GOP is 100% "Clear and Present Danger"

People waiting to vote in Marietta, GA in 2020

(And, during the CoVID-19 pandemic)

Three articles on voting-rights in this post.

First is this story from the AP with this headline:

“Experts warn of dangers from breach of voter system software”

ATLANTA (AP) — Republican efforts questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential race have led to voting system breaches that election security experts say pose a heightened risk to future elections.

The First Story: Copies of the Dominion Voting Systems software used to manage elections — from designing ballots to configuring voting machines and tallying results — were distributed at an event this month in SD organized by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ally of former Trump who has made unsubstantiated claims about last year's election.

Voting machine expert and election security pioneer Harri Hursti says: “The release gives hackers a practice environment to probe for vulnerabilities they could exploit and a road map to avoid defenses. All the hackers would need is physical access to the systems because they are not supposed to be connected to the internet. The door is now wide open. The only question is, how do you sneak in the door?”

A Dominion representative declined comment, citing an investigation.

Election technology expert Kevin Skoglund says: “U.S. election technology is dominated by just three vendors comprising 90% of the market, meaning election officials cannot easily swap out their existing technology. Release of the software copies essentially provides a blueprint for those trying to interfere with how elections are run. They could sabotage the system, alter the ballot design or even try to change results. This disclosure increases both the likelihood that something happens and the impact of what would happen if it does.”

Concern Source: The effort by Republicans to examine voting equipment began soon after the November presidential election as Trump challenged the results and blamed his loss on widespread fraud, even though there has been no evidence of it.

Judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, election officials of both parties and Trump’s own AG (Barr) have dismissed the claims. 

Federal and state election officials called the 2020 election the “most secure” in U.S. history, and post-election audits across the country found no significant anomalies.

In Antrim County (MI), a judge had allowed a forensic exam of voting equipment after a brief mix-up of election results led to a suit alleging fraud. It was dismissed in May and Harri Hursti said the date on the software release matches the date of the forensic exam.

In Colorado, Federal, state, and local authorities are investigating whether Mesa County elections staff might have provided unauthorized individuals access to their systems. Why? The county elections clerk, Tina Peters, appeared onstage with Lindell in South Dakota and told the crowd her office was being targeted by Democrats in the state.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said she alerted federal election security officials of the breach and was told it was not viewed as a “significant heightening of the election risk landscape at this point.” 

Mesa County commissioners voted to replace voting equipment that Griswold had ordered could no longer be used.

Geoff Hale, who leads the election security effort at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said his agency has always operated on the assumption that system vulnerabilities are known by malicious actors. Election officials are focused instead on ways they can reduce risk, such as using ballots with a paper record that can be verified by the voter and rigorous post-election audits, Hale said, and then added: “Having Dominion's software exposed publicly doesn't change the agency's guidance.” 

Security researcher Jack Cable said he assumes U.S. adversaries already had access to the software. He said he is more concerned the release would fan distrust among the growing number of people not inclined to believe in the security of U.S elections.

Cable, who recently joined a cybersecurity firm run by former CISA Director Christopher Krebs (fired by Trump) and former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos, added: “It is a concern that people, in the pursuit of trying to show the system is insecure, are actually making it more insecure.”

Concerns over access to voting machines and software first surfaced this year in Arizona, where the Republican-controlled state Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no previous election experience, to audit the Maricopa County election. The firm's CEO, Doug Logan, also now infected with CoVID previously tweeted support of conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election.

After the county's Dominion voting systems were turned over to the firm, Arizona’s top election official determined they could never be used again and ordered the county to buy new ones.

Dominion has filed suits contesting various unfounded claims about its systems.

In May, they said: “Giving Cyber Ninjas access to its code would be reckless, given the firm’s bias, it would cause irreparable damage to election security.”

Election technology and security expert Ryan Macias, in Arizona earlier this year to observe that review, was alarmed by a lack of cybersecurity protocols. There was no information about who was given access, whether those people had passed background checks or were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. 

Cyber Ninjas did not respond to an email with questions about the review and their security protocols, and Macias was not surprised to hear that copies of Antrim County’s election management system had surfaced online given the questionable motives of the groups conducting the reviews and the central role that voting systems have played in conspiracy theories.

Macias said: “This is what I anticipated would happen, and I anticipate it will happen yet again coming out of Arizona. These actors have no liability and no rules of engagement.”

My Note: Now, after reading that story, follow this from Trump’s niece, Mary Trump in a revealing article here from Business Insider with this headline:

“Donald Trump's niece says he will run for president in 2024, but there will be no Trump political dynasty because his children lack charisma”

She knows him better than anyone

Afterwards, anyone can see how both articles are connected to the same subject that has been Trump’s constant contention that the 2020 election was “rigged against him,” or that it was “fraudulent and fixed” against him. 

Everything he has tried to do to overturn that election ever since has failed, including some 60 court cases. All his failed attempts and now these two stories show Trump’s negative driving force and effort attacking our free, fair, safe, and secure right to vote and off a cliff right into an bottomless abyss. Trump wants an outcome that favors him and the entire GOP with one aim and one single goal: To make sure that in future elections he and they never ever lose again starting in the 2022 midterms next year and elections beyond that date. 

That is deadly apparent

Finally is this related story in part from AFP news: Tens of thousands of people were rallying Saturday in Washington and dozens of other cities to protest against laws in several Republican-led states that critics say will make it harder for minorities and youngsters to vote.

The date selected for the rallies – in cities from Seattle to Atlanta – was not picked at random: It was on August 28, 1963 that a quarter-million people descended on Washington for a massive civil rights rally highlighted by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous “I have a dream” speech. 

Then in 1965, Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act (VRA), meant to ban discriminatory election measures.

But some states, mainly in the South, nonetheless passed often technical changes that ultimately made it harder for African Americans, who tend to be reliably Democratic, to vote. 

That process accelerated sharply as Trump hammered away at the unsubstantiated allegation that massive voting fraud had cost him victory in the November 2020 presidential election. 

Since January, at least 18 states have adopted a total of 30 restrictive election laws, with dozens of others under consideration, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. 

Those laws range from (1) a requirement to have a fixed address in order to register to vote, and (2) a ban on the drive-through voting that was popular in some states last year amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Democratic-controlled House passed two draft laws to limit such restrictions, but they are given virtually no chance of passing the closely divided Senate. 

My 2 Cents: Yes, this post is long, but with the three articles above tied together vis-à-vis the subject remains the same: Protecting our right to vote free, fair, safe, and secure.

Sadly, that is under sustained Trump pressure and that from his owned and operated GOP. They want no part of that, ergo they are changing laws for voting as I said to ensure and guarantee that they never lose again, and that must not stand.

This issue must get to the U.S. Supreme Court and the sooner the better for the country. But, how would they rule on the new laws?

That is the $64,000 dollar question isn’t it? In the meantime Congress must pass the voting rights bill now pending and give them a chance, the public is firmly behind protecting our right to vote free, fair, safe, and secure without the Trump and GOP resistance we now face.

Thanks for stopping by.