25+ New election links, must reads, videos and posts

8-5-2016 – Politico’s ‘How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes’ Finally Gets Close to Real Solutions – With Russia already meddling in 2016, a ragtag group of obsessive tech experts is warning that stealing the ultimate prize—victory on Nov. 8—would be child’s play. If this century has shifted our trust from away from our neighbors toward machines, it might be time to switch back again. Eight countries in Europe that once flirted with digital voting have seen six go back to paper; Britain counted its Brexit votes by hand. Even if the vote were never hacked—and it is an exceedingly implausible event—the remotest possibility is an albatross on democracy and a boon for mischief-makers, and not just the cyber attackers. Trump’s most recent jujitsu—pointing out that by virtue of the fact that the election is hackable, it could be rigged against him—illustrates this risk. Technology has amplified not only the threat of hacking, but the threat of a hack.

8-5-2016 – BradBlog – Politico summarizes much of BRAD BLOG’s 15 years of e-voting coverage in 8,500 smart words…. – Please read the cover story of Politico Magazine today headlined “How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes”. Ben Wofford’s excellent, comprehensive feature summarizes a great deal of almost 15 years of our work here at The BRAD BLOG. The 8,500+ word article is far too detailed to adequately summarize, or even quote from in detail here. So please go pour a tall drink or cup of coffee (you may need several, there’s a lot there) and go read about the “parabola of havoc and mismanagement that has been the fifteen-year nightmare of state and local officials”, as he accurately describes it, following the horrifically misguided and ill-advised move to computerized voting and tabulation systems following the 2000 election. I suspect we’ve filed almost as many articles on this topic as Wofford has words in today’s piece!

8-6-2016 BradBlog – 4th Circuit Denies North Carolina’s Motion to Stay Injunction of It’s Illegal Voter Suppression Law – The next day, on August 4, the same unanimous 4th Circuit panel summarily denied the NC’s request for a stay, noting that, during oral arguments “the State assured us it would be able to comply with any order we issued by late July.” Indeed, a stay, the 3-judge panel noted, would actually violate the Purcell principle because the “State has already notified its voters that it will not ask them to show ID [when voting at the polling place] and that early voting will begin on October 20.”

8-5-2016 BradBlog – The Great Unhacking of American Elections? – Politico feature on Princeton computer scientists who cracked U.S. e-voting and tabulation systems offers what could be very good news

8-1-2016 – NPR – Hacking An Election: Why It’s Not As Far-Fetched As You Might Think – Smith says the Democratic Party hacks are another red flag that someone might try to interfere with election results, and that there are many ways to do that. “If you can get at an election management system, you could potentially alter results, or muddy up the results, or you could even just shed doubt on the outcome because you make it clear that there’s been tampering,” she says. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that U.S. elections are locally run, with thousands of different systems and varying degrees of security. The good news is that a growing number of voters are using machines that have paper backups to double-check any suspicious results. “Today, 80 percent of Americans will vote either on a paper ballot that’s read by a scanner, or on an electronic voting machine that has a paper trail that they can review,” says Larry Norden with the Brennan Center for Justice in New York.

8-4-2016 – BradBlog – DHS Seeks to Protect U.S. Election Infrastructure – But Is That Even Possible? – Guest: Indiana University cybersecurity law expert Scott Shackelford | Also: Why your right to vote matters, 52 years after ‘Freedom Summer’. – “We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process is critical infrastructure, like the financial sector, like the power grid,” DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said this week. “There is a vital national interest in our electoral process.”

8-3-2016 – BradCast – So, NOW You’re Worried About a Hacked Election?! – MSM, Repubs and Dems finally decide e-voting and tabulation a concern…– On charges made by Donald Trump of a rigged November election, the case made by Bernie Sanders supporters that Hillary Clinton may have won the primary due to election fraud, and the mainstream corporate media finally deciding that, yes, hacked voting and tabulation systems really are a threat to American elections. It’s fun (not really) to see corporate media outlets — once again on the eve a major election — suddenly very worried about so much of what we have been reporting (see, literally, thousands of stories at The BRAD BLOG and on The BradCast) about the vulnerability of the U.S. electoral system. Brad has been warning of exactly that for more than a decade.

8-3-2016 – NY Times – U.S. [Department of Homeland Security] Seeks to Protect Voting System From Cyberattacks – WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is weighing new steps to bolster the security of the United States’ voting process against cyberthreats, including whether to designate the electronic ballot-casting system for November’s elections as “critical infrastructure,” Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, said on Wednesday. In the wake of hacks that infiltrated Democratic campaign computer systems, Mr. Johnson said he was conducting high-level discussions about “election cybersecurity,” a vastly complex effort given that there are 9,000 jurisdictions in the United States that have a hand in carrying out the balloting, many of them with different ways of collecting, tallying and reporting votes. “We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process is critical infrastructure, like the financial sector, like the power grid,” Mr. Johnson told reporters in Washington. “There’s a vital national interest in our electoral process.”

8-5-2016 – RawStory – Computer expert hacks into common voting machine in minutes to reveal shocking 2016 election threat – “This isn’t a crazy hypothetical anymore,” Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice who studied under Appel told Politico. “Once you bring nation states’ cyber activity into the game? These machines, they barely work in a friendly environment.”

8-4-2016 – MyCentralNJ – Protesters allege Somerville polling firm involved in election fraud – For three days this week, a small but hardy band of protesters has stood on the corner in front of the house, asking Edison Research to release the raw data of its exit polls in an effort to determine whether there was fraud in the way votes were counted. The protesters, who held up signs and signaled to passing voters, believe the contention by trustvote.org that Edison Research changed its exit polls to fit the results of electronic vote tallies in this year’s Democratic primaries

8-2-2016 – Wired – America’s Electronic Voting Machines Are Scarily Easy Targets –

8-2-2016 – The Gazette – Most Sanders supporters think primary was rigged – Nearly two-thirds of Bernie Sanders supporters say they believe the Democratic primary process was rigged.

8-2-2016 – BradCast – Spate of Voting Rights Victories in Six States – KS, MI, NC, ND, TX, WI – Julie Ebenstein, staff attorney with the ACLU Voting Rights Project, to discuss the remarkable string of encouraging voting rights victories in courts in some six different states over just the past few days.

7-22-2016 – Redacted Tonight – “MASSIVE Election Fraud Seen In Primaries – A Full Summary” – 9+ minutes with Lee talking as fast as he can summarizing what has happened so far…complete with charts – a good primer for Election Justice beginners – [24,000+ views as of 7-24-2016]

7-28-2016 – TruthOut – With the Clinton Coronation Underway, Did Sanders Actually Win the Primary? – “When contesting an election, many want absolute proof of fraud. But unequivocal evidence is hard to find. It often requires painstaking work of many teams and substantial resources. Questions about fraud often begin with just a hunch, but only the dedicated few follow it up with an investigation.” Attempts to “show” both sides may have neutered this article.

7-28-2016 – Members of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group Issue Statement on DNC Hack – 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. The voting process is critical to our democracy and must be proof against such attacks or the threat of such attacks. Voting processes and results must receive security akin to that we expect for critical infrastructure. 30 Major Prominent Signors

7-26-2016 Jared Answers Questions about DNC Class Action Lawsuit (#4 in series, from Philadelphia) – Jared H. Beck, Esq. discusses the latest developments, including Plaintiffs’ anticipated motion to the court to disqualify the DNC lawyers. Filmed in Philadelphia during the DNC National Convention. [300 video views as of 7-26-2016]

7-25-2016 Election Justice USA:EXECUTIVE Summary – Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries

7-25-2016 Election Justice USA: FULL Report – Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries

7-19-2016 – Highbinder – How Progressive Media Won’t Let Us Talk About Election Fraud – ?That seems to be the collective response by most progressives to the notion of election fraud. Otherwise-known-as “The Three Wise Monkeys” stance: “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. Despite coverage throughout the primary of widespread voter suppression, purging,disenfranchisement , and discrepancies between exit polls and voting results, progressive media seem unwilling to even consider that maybe Hillary Clinton is not the legitimately chosen presumptive nominee.” and “More than half of American voters believe the U.S. political system is rigged and more than two-thirds want it changed. What will it take for progressives to finally rise up and change it?”