You may recall that, back in 2008, when we were still electing presidents without Twitter accounts but possessed of some measure of self-control, the Democratic Party carried both the newly insane state of North Carolina and Indiana, cradle of unpopular political theocrats. Barack Obama was the first Democratic candidate to win in Indiana since Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Clearly, this was a situation up with which Indiana Republicans could not put. And their current finagling is only one broadside our embattled franchise has taken just this week.

According to an analysis by The Indianapolis Star, the state's Republicans have systematically monkeywrenched their election system to advantage themselves and to disadvantage Democratic voters, particularly minority ones.

From 2008 to 2016, GOP officials expanded early voting stations in Republican dominated Hamilton County, IndyStar's analysis found, and decreased them in the state's biggest Democratic hotbed, Marion County. That made voting more convenient in GOP areas for people with transportation issues or busy schedules. And the results were immediate. Most telling, Hamilton County saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting from 2008 to 2016, while Marion County saw a 26 percent decline. Absentee ballots are used at early voting stations. Population growth and other factors may have played a role, but Hamilton County Clerk Kathy Richardson, a Republican, told IndyStar the rise in absentee voting in Hamilton County was largely a result of the addition of two early voting stations, which brought the total to three."It was a great concept to open those (voting stations)," Richardson said, adding that the turnout might have increased with the addition of even more voting machines. Other Central Indiana Republican strongholds, including Boone, Johnson and Hendricks counties, also have added early voting sites — and enjoyed corresponding increases in absentee voter turnout. But not Marion County, which tends to vote Democratic, and has a large African-American population.

This is modern Jim Crow, plain and simple. This is using the institutions of self-government against the ability of a targeted population to participate. The usual shabby banality has been mustered up for the purpose of denying the obvious foul reality.

Some Republicans blame the dearth of early voting in Marion County on a lack of local funding. "I have never received any type of message that the individuals in charge of Marion County have any interest in spending the money (to expand satellite locations)," said Jim Merritt, chairman of the Marion County Republican Party.

Meanwhile, down in North Carolina, we are edging ever closer to a very perilous conclusion about the last presidential election. From NPR:

"Voters were going in and being told that they had already voted — and they hadn't," recalls Allison Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. The electronic systems — known as poll books — also indicated that some voters had to show identification, even though they did not. Investigators later discovered the company that provided those poll books had been the target of a Russian cyberattack. There is no evidence the two incidents are linked, but the episode has revealed serious gaps in U.S. efforts to secure elections. Nine months later, officials are still trying to sort out the details.

But Susan Greenhalgh, who is part of an election security group called Verified Voting, worried that authorities underreacted. She was monitoring developments in Durham County when she saw a news report that the problem poll books were supplied by a Florida company named VR Systems. "My stomach just dropped," says Greenhalgh. She knew that in September, the FBI had warned Florida election officials that Russians had tried to hack one of their vendor's computers. VR Systems was rumored to be that company. "I became really concerned that this might be a cyberattack, some sort of cyber event," says Greenhalgh. But she had trouble getting anyone's attention. Greenhalgh says a contact she had at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was concerned but said there was little federal officials could do unless the state requested help.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson famously suggested that the mechanics of voting be made part of the critical national infrastructure, which would open up a range of national options in a situation like the one in North Carolina. This notion got shot down by a coalition of local election officials, state governments, and that part of the overall conservative movement that has been working on voter suppression since the second Bush administration. Here's Hans von Spakovsky, one of the stars of that movement, on Johnson's idea last August.

There is only one problem with this — there is no credible threat of a successful cyberattack on our voting and ballot-counting process because of the way our current election system is organized.

Maybe he should do a shift as a poll worker in Durham and see what he thinks.

Inching closer, ever closer.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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