Russians Hacked U.S. Voting Systems

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Confirmation of what has long been rumored:

The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn't talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, "We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated."

Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russian intrusions, said, "2016 was a wake-up call and now it's incumbent upon states and the Feds to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again."

"We were able to determine that the scanning and probing of voter registration databases was coming from the Russian government."

...There is no evidence that any of the registration rolls were altered in any fashion, according to U.S. officials.

I'm not sure I believe it was only a probe, frankly, but okay.

Reminder: It was Jeh Johnson who recommended designating election systems as critical infrastructure last August upon evidence of attempted Russian hacking, and Republicans said nope until after the election.

And then, even after the election, they did nothing. So when Johnson testified before the House Intelligence Committee as part of their Russia investigation last June, he opened his testimony by saying: "In 2016, the Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election, plain and simple. Now, the key question for the president and Congress is: What are we going to do to protect the American people and their democracy from this kind of thing in the future?"

The answer to that question continues to be "nothing."

Despite the fact that the Russians aren't going to stop at a probe. They were probing for a reason.

If we are to have any voting rights at all, surely chief among them is guaranteeing the integrity of the elections in which we vote. But the democracy-killing Republicans don't give a fuck about voting rights, so.

Again, the Republicans' refusal to protect U.S. elections from foreign interference is something about which we all need to making noise, if we expect the midterms to be legitimate elections.

We can't say we are looking forward to a "blue tsunami" in November, but just assume that those elections will be fair and valid. MAKE YOUR CALLS NOW. Contact your Senators and Representatives and demand that they designate election systems as critical infrastructure and take the necessary steps to protect them.