Electoral security

Trump Hints At "Russian Hacking" Revelations In Coming Days: "I Know Things Other People Don't"

During a brief, informal exchange with reporters on New Year's Eve at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Donald Trump questioned the official version of the "Russians hacking the election", saying it was possible "somebody else" compromised the Democratic campaign’s servers, adding that he will reveal some previously undisclosed facts in the coming days by hinting that "I also know things that other people don’t know, we they cannot be sure of the situation."

Electoral security

Homeland Security Working to Ensure Integrity of Election

Since the DNCLeaks scandal, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made the phrase "rigged political system" a key theme of his campaign.

It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that the election could be rigged—or hacked—to ensure a specific result. And that was the subject of a recent conference call between U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and elections officials from all 50 states.

The department released the following statement about the phone call:

Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson hosted a phone call with members of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and other Chief Election Officials to discuss the cybersecurity of the election infrastructure. It is critically important to continue to work to ensure the security and resilience of our electoral infrastructure, particularly as the risk environment evolves...

Electoral security

Experts say cybercriminals are trying to manipulate the US election

A majority of cybersecurity professionals think cybercriminals are interfering in the U.S. election, and agree with the 2016 Republican Party platform endorsing strike-backs against hackers, a new study from cybersecurity company Tripwire found.

The breach of the Democratic National Committee's computer network and subsequent leaks of sensitive information so close to the U.S. election is the most high-profile way in which cybercriminals are trying to manipulate the election, wrote Tripwire director of IT security and risk strategy Tim Erlin.

The FBI is investigating the hack, which security experts have said would be in keeping with Russian tactics.

Two-thirds of respondents said cybercriminals were influencing the outcome of the upcoming election and the vast majority of respondents — 82 percent — believed that state-sponsored attacks around elections should be considered acts of cyberwar.

Electoral security

Trump solicits election observers after warning of vote rigging

After warning supporters of possible election fraud in Pennsylvania, Republican presidential nomineeDonald Trump invited supporters on his official website to volunteer as election observers to "Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!"

The new page on his website provides supporters with a form to fill out to "volunteer to be a Trump Election Observer."

Speaking at a Friday evening rally in Altoona, Pa., Trump again raised the issue of possible voter fraud in the November elections, saying, "we're going to watch Pennsylvania."

"Go down to certain areas and watch and study make sure other people don't come in and vote five times," he urged his audience.

Electoral security

FEC Commissioner, Citing The Intercept, Calls for Ban on Foreign Money in Politics

FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION member Ann Ravel on Tuesdayproposed a ban on political contributions by domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations.

Ravel’s proposal cites The Intercept series last week reporting that American Pacific International Capital, a California corporation owned by two Chinese nationals, donated $1.3 million to Right to Rise USA, the main Super PAC supporting Jeb Bush’s presidential run.

Ravel wrote that as a result of Citizens United and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, “our campaign finance system is vulnerable to influence from foreign nationals and foreign corporations through Domestic subsidiaries and affiliates in ways unimaginable a decade ago.”

The 2010 Citizens United decision struck down the prohibition on corporations spending their own money on “independent expenditures,” thereby opening the possibility that foreign money could flow into elections that way.

Electoral security

Media lie about Hillary’s severe health condition

Major media are rushing to do damage control on Hillary’s health. They’re trying to lay down the concrete of a fake consensus that she’s fine, because her doctor issued a positive report in 2015.

But one of the bottom lines is: she’s suffered from dangerous blood clots. And the treatment is blood-thinners, which are given to reduce the possibility of a fatal clot.

Hillary is taking Coumadin, also known as Warfarin.

It’s a rat poison. It kills rats by causing them to bleed out internally. This is a fact.

Therefore, the prescribing doctor and the patient walk a tightrope. How much Coumadin is too much? How little is too little? Too much, and life-threatening bleeding can occur. Too little and fatal blood clots can occur.

Therefore, Hillary is being monitored VERY closely, on a weekly basis, with tests. But the tests aren’t mathematically precise. The monitoring isn’t ironclad science.

Electoral security

How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes




In the uproar over the DNC, observers have been quick to point out the obvious: There is no singular national body that regulates the security or even execution of what happens on Election Day, and there never has been. It’s a process regulated state by state. Technical standards for voting are devised by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Election Assistance Commission—which was formed after the disputed 2000 presidential election that hinged on faulty ballots—but the guidelines are voluntary. (For three years the EAC limped on without confirmed commissioners—an EAC commissioner stepped down in 2005, calling its work a “charade”). Policy on voting is decided by each state and, in some cases, each county—a system illustrated vividly by the trench warfare of voter ID laws that pockmark the country. In total, more than 8,000 jurisdictions of varying size and authority administer the country’s elections, almost entirely at the hands of an army of middle-age volunteers. Some would say such a system cries out for security standards.

Electoral security

100-Page Report Shows Staggering Evidence Of Election Fraud In Democratic Primary

A recent report from Election Justice USA shows as many as 184 delegates were stolen from Bernie Sanders due to election fraud in the Democratic Primary

While it’s unclear whether the super delegates would have voted for Sanders, the EJUSA report does make one thing clear: Bernie Sanders won the majority of pledged delegates in the Democratic Primary at 2030 to Hillary Clinton’s 2021.

These numbers were arrived at by EJUSA’s intensive research and verification into claims of voter suppression, unintended party affiliation changes, heavy voter purging, and registrations never being honored by the Board of Elections in various counties throughout the U.S. during the Democratic Primary. In some cases, signatures were even forged on party affiliation documents and evidence of computer hacking being involved has come to light.

Electoral security
MEDIA MANIPULATION: DNC leaks reveal NY Times, MSNBC helped sabotage Sanders

Even before the DNC Wikileaks scandal, we knew the NY Times was biased against Bernie Sanders. But in alarming email exchanges, the DNC claimed they were able to get NY Times reporter Nick Confessore to NOT report on the controversial Hillary Victory Fund, a joint effort of the DNC and the Hillary campaign.

The DNC prepared talking points, excuses and legal defenses to respond to claims that the HVF was bundling campaign donations to skirt legal limits (a "money laundering conduit" according to Politico. Walmart's Alice Walton and Hillary's other billionaire donors could now give 33 times the max donation, all in one convenient envelope.

As George Clooney noted, the donation amounts were "obscene", but to make them legal, they were routed through the HVF to get around campaign finance laws prohibiting the wealthy from giving exorbitant amounts to a single candidate. The DNC did not want this to get out during the primaries.

Electoral security

Mark Rolofson: Election fraud in primaries robbed Sanders

One of the most unreported stories of 2016 is election fraud in the Democratic presidential primaries, that has earned Hillary Clinton her victory over Bernie Sanders. There are those in progressive media who remain focused on this issue including "Redacted Tonight" of RT America & The Humanist Report. The mainstream media, including NPR, has ignored the issue entirely.

The Institute For American Democracy & Election Integrity has filed a lawsuit that involves the Democratic primaries in over a dozen states. Go to their website Trustvote.org to learn about their work and the lawsuit.

The lawsuit contends "Here in the United States, all of our votes are counted by private corporations with proprietary software which they do not want people to examine if there is a problem with the election. These problems could include unwarranted purging of votes, apparent flipping of votes, disappearing of candidate(s) while voting and disappearing votes. An examination of Scytl/SOE & ES&S, two vote-counting companies shows many negative reviews regarding their management of elections".

Electoral security

Stanford University Confirms Democratic Election Fraud - Bernie Would Have Won !

Given the stakes in the outcome of the American presidential elections, ensuring the integrity of the electoral process is of the utmost importance. Are the results we are witnessing in the 2016 primary elections trustworthy? While Donald Trump enjoyed a clear and early edge over his Republican rivals, the Democratic contest between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernard Sanders has been far more competitive. At present, Secretary Clinton enjoys an apparent advantage over Sanders. Is this claimed advantage legitimate? We contend that it is not, and suggest an explanation for the advantage: States that are at risk for election fraud in 2016 systematically and overwhelmingly favor Secretary Clinton. We provide converging evidence for this claim.

Electoral security

Homeland Security Chief Concerned Hackers Could Infiltrate Voting System

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday he is increasingly concerned that hackers could infiltrate the nation’s electoral system and said the Obama administration is considering ways to bolster it from attacks.

With an increasing number of voting machines using wireless technology to collect and tabulate votes, the risk of cyber attacks has grown significantly, Johnson said. “We are actively thinking about election cybersecurity … [and] whether our election system,” he said, “is critical infrastructure … like the electric grid.”

Johnson, who spoke with reporters at the Monitor Breakfast in Washington, DC, said designating the nation’s election system as critical infrastructure would trigger significant new cybersecurity investments by DHS and would make it a focus of the agency’s efforts.

Electoral security

Election systems to be treated as 'critical infrastructure' – Homeland Security Dept.

The White House has announced it is considering categorizing election systems as critical infrastructure. The declared intention to increase federal funding for protecting voting rights comes as Texas loosens discriminatory voter ID laws.

Amid concerns over cybersecurity risks to electoral systems, heightened by the recent hack of Democratic National Committee computers, President Barack Obama’s national security team is looking to improve the security of voting systems, Associated Press reported.

Classifying the election system as critical infrastructure would elevate it to the same levels of protection that electrical and banking systems receive. However, this could prove to be easier said than done.

Electoral security

Lessons from the deep murk

On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks — the courageous international organization dedicated to governmental transparency — exposed hundreds of internal emails circulated among senior staff of theDemocratic National Committee during the past 18 months.

At a time when Democratic Party officials were publicly professing neutrality during the party’s presidential primaries, the DNC’s internal emails showed a pattern of distinct bias toward the candidacy of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a marked prejudice toward the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Some of the emails were raw in their tone, and some could fairly be characterized as failing to respect Mr. Sanders’ Jewish heritage.

Electoral security

How Hackers Could Destroy Election Day

Stealing and leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee could be just the start. Hacking the presidential election itself could be next, a bipartisan group of former intelligence and security officials recently warned. Whomever was behind the DNC hack also could target voting machines and the systems for tabulating votes, which are dangerously insecure.

“Election officials at every level of government should take this lesson to heart: our electoral process could be a target for reckless foreign governments and terrorist groups,” wrote 31 members of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, which includes a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a former secretary of Homeland Security.

Electoral security

Three More Democratic National Committee Officials Resign in Wake of Email Leak

Three more top Democratic National Committee officials plan to leave the organization, including the chief executive and the finance head, as fallout from an email-hacking scandal further shook the party’s leadership ranks.

CEO Amy Dacey, communications director Luis Miranda and Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall will be leaving the DNC, the committee said Tuesday. Their departures follow on the heels of Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who resigned last month after hacked emails that appeared to show staffers at the DNC conspiring against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the late days of his Democratic primary race against Hillary Clinton.

Electoral security

Democratic National Committee CEO Amy Dacey resigns in wake of email breach

Democratic National Committee CEO Amy Dacey has resigned amid the controversy over  the release of a cache of hacked emails from the committee, according to a Democrat familiar with the matter.

Dacey's resignation would make her the second person to step down after the breach.

...With the release of the WikiLeaks emails, however, Dacey was implicated in one of the most damaging exchanges, in which a DNC official, Brad Marshall appeared to speculate about how Sen. Bernie Sanders’s jewish heritage could be used against him.

Electoral security

Who Leaked the Damning DNC Emails? What Difference Does It Make?

The Democratic National Committee under Debbie Wasserman Schultz in fact served as the Hillary Clinton Coronation Organizing Committee, operating, step by step, to ensure that the front-runner would become the party’s nominee.

Some of us assumed all along that it was all preprogrammed. But then, on the eve of the coronation itself, leaked emails revealed to everyone that, indeed, top DNC officials conspired to defeat the Sanders campaign. Just as the party leaders were lavishing praise on Sanders for bringing in so many new, enthusiastic activists—and stressing how close Clinton and Sanders have become programmatically—somebody released these emails that cannot but arouse further indignation among Sanders’ supporters (among others, who care about fairness).

Electoral security

US election shocker: is this how the vote will be rigged?

I urge you to dive into her multi-part series, Fraction Magic (Part-1 here). Here are key Harris quotes. They’re all shockers:

“Our testing [of GEMS] shows that one vote can be counted 25 times, another only one one-thousandth of a time, effectively converting some votes to zero.”

“This report summarizes the results of our review of the GEMS election management system, which counts approximately 25 percent of all votes in the United States. The results of this study demonstrate that a fractional vote feature is embedded in each GEMS application which can be used to invisibly, yet radically, alter election outcomes by pre-setting desired vote percentages to redistribute votes. This tampering is not visible to election observers, even if they are standing in the room and watching the computer. Use of the decimalized vote feature is unlikely to be detected by auditing or canvass procedures, and can be applied across large jurisdictions in less than 60 seconds.”

Electoral security

CIA’s Gold Standard for Influencing Foreign Elections

The DNC emails confirmed what everyone already knew beyond a reasonable doubt. The DNC and its Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz were de facto megaphones and foot soldiers for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Party primary elections for the presidential nomination. The political benefit to Republican presidential nominee Trump is speculative at best. Indeed, the Putin-orchestrated WikiLeak disclosures could benefit Ms. Clinton because the American electorate generally views Russia with a jaundiced eye—especially after the annexation of Crimea, aggression against Ukraine, and industrial-scale covert doping of its Olympian athletes.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden fretted, “they’re clearly taking their game to another level. It would be weaponizing information. You don’t want a foreign power affecting elections.”

Thereby hangs a tale of United States hypocrisy which speaks volumes about our suboptimal global reputation. The very first CIA covert action manipulated the 1948 Italian elections. By its own later admissions to the House Select Committee on Intelligence, the CIA gave $1 million to Italian “center parties.”