There is evidence of widespread hacking of the voter databases in the months prior to the election, and on Election Day. It is impossible to say this had no effect on the outcome of the election, and it appears increasingly likely that Russian interference did, in fact, tip the scales the tiny bit necessary to throw the election to the man who is already, without a doubt, the worst president in history, and I should add, that is no mean feat. Just ask George W. Bush, who had to fuck up royally to win the crown for himself.
In the olden days there was no internet and even it its early stages, many computers were not connected. If one wanted to get information from one computer to another, in the absence of a local area wired network, one put the data on a “floppy disk” and walked it from one computer to another. This is admittedly an inconvenient way of doing things, but it has the advantage of being hackproof, unless one is able to get direct access to the computer on which the source data is maintained.
It therefore seems reasonable to suggest that, if we must use computers in the election process, that they be stand alone computers, unconnected to the internet in any way, shape or form. That doesn’t mean data could not be provided to interested parties. Again, in the olden days, our town committee was able to obtain computer files from our local town clerk containing registration data. We got them on the “floppy disks” I mentioned. We could make whatever changes we liked to that data, but we couldn’t affect the data maintained on the town computers. Only duly authorized people could do that.
There is no reason in the world why a system could not be adopted that made use of computers not connected to the internet and therefore not easily hackable. It might slow things down a bit, but I’d rather have had to wait until Wednesday morning to find out that Hillary had won, rather than learn early Tuesday evening that the end of the Republic was at hand.
It is also scarcely credible that there are still people advocating “secure” voting over the internet.
Almost entirely off this subject, but this hacking reminds me of one of the very first episodes of the old Mission Impossible television series, in which our heroes decided to accept a voting related mission, knowing full well that if they were caught or killed “the Secretary [would] disavow any knowledge of [their] actions”. They went to a banana republic somewhere and hacked the (non-computerized, mechanical) voting machines just before an important election. At the time (mid 60s) it seemed perfectly plausible that a top secret US force would undertake such a mission to insure a fair election, as the voting machines had been manipulated by a sinister force to insure a predetermined result. Alas, such a scenario is no longer plausible, nor was it ever, but we didn’t know that quite yet.
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