RECLAIMING DEMOCRACY: SECURE THE BALLOT BOX.
PROTECT
THE BALLOT BOX
Democracy
be Damned!
“It’s not who
votes that counts. It’s who counts
the votes.”
Attributed to
Joseph Stalin, Soviet Dictator 1878-1953
It is not
known when the first election took place.
Maybe it was in ancient Athens circa 600 BC or maybe it was in some dark
cave where Neanderthals selected a martyr to appease the gods. Whenever it took place it can safely be
assumed that the first attempt at election fraud happened shortly
thereafter. When power is
contested it is the nature of human beings to abandon all moral restraint. In the absence of rules, regulations
and oversight a free and fair election is highly unlikely. In fact, when rules are not enforced,
regulations are subject to interpretation and punishment is limited to a gentle
public admonition, the odds of a fair election become negligible.
In the post
Civil War South democracy was a myth.
Like modern day Russia or Turkey, people went through the motions of an
election but the outcomes were preordained. Former slaves were granted the vote but former slaveholders
found a variety of ways to deny that vote, including poll taxes and absurd
literacy requirements. The
assassination of Abraham Lincoln postponed true emancipation for a hundred
years as his successor, Andrew Johnson, a blatant racist, sought to negate
everything that Lincoln and the Union Army fought and died for. Between 1865 and 1900 it has been
estimated that there were no less than 262 disputed elections for seats in the
House of Representatives – predominantly in the South. [1]
There are many
ways to steal an election and most of them have been executed over time with
varying degrees of success. There
is stuffing the ballot box and its counterpart: destroying valid votes. There are notorious cases of votes
being cast by the deceased under the Chicago Machine of Richard Daley and
widely reported cases of buying votes in the New York City of Tammany
Hall.
In the recent
midterm election of 2018 a case of election fraud concerned absentee ballot
harvesting in the ninth congressional district of North Carolina. In that scheme an operative was hired
to collect blank absentee ballots and fill them out in favor of his Republican
client. A court threw out the
results and a special election was ordered. The results remained the same but at least the man
responsible for the operation faces felony charges of ballot tampering and
perjury – a far cry from the accusation of “shenanigans” that operatives usually
face when defrauding democracy.
Since voting
became electronic there have been numerous claims of vote flipping where voters
report casting their votes for one candidate while the machine records votes
for the opposing candidate. In
2004 Walden O’Dell, the chief executive of Diebold, Inc., manufacturer of
Ohio’s voting machines, famously guaranteed deliverance of Ohio to sitting
president George W. Bush. He kept
his word, delivering Ohio’s decisive electoral votes in an extremely close
election. Reports of various
anomalies triggered speculation that electronic vote tampering along with
massive disenfranchisement schemes aimed at minority communities awarded a
second term to the younger Bush. [2]
Faced with
accusations of securities fraud, Diebold changed its name and was later
acquired by Election Systems and Software. Problems with electronic voting machines did not vanish with
the name change, however. Diebold
machines are still in use in eighteen states as well as Brazil and other
nations. As recently as August of
this year hackers in Las Vegas demonstrated how vulnerable these systems are by
converting voting machines into game consuls, a jukebox and conduits for other
endeavors in a matter of minutes.
Changing votes or vote tallies was considered too easy to challenge the
hackers. [3]
Accusations of
vote flipping and other means of tampering with electronic voting have become
commonplace but little has been done to correct the vulnerability. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon observed: “Election officials across the country
are buying election systems that will be out of date the moment they open the
box.”
It recently
came to light that Russian affiliated hackers gained access to the electronic
ballot boxes in all fifty states in the 2016 presidential election. The Senate Intelligence Committee
warned the White House as well as the public that Russian intelligence remained
motivated and capable of interfering in the next election but neither the
president nor his party have seen fit to act at any level to protect the ballot
box. In fact Senate majority
leader Mitch McConnell was so unimpressed that he blocked election security
legislation on the same day that the revelations were revealed. It was this lack of concern that earned
McConnell the moniker of “Moscow Mitch.” [4]
(He later
changed his position, giving support to the legislation in a yet to be
determined form. If it provides
added security measures, mandatory paper ballots in all fifty states and the
District of Columbia, and a requirement for campaigns to report foreign
contacts, congress is to be commended on both sides of the aisle. If, however, past behavior is a
predictor of future conduct, it will fall significantly short.) [5]
While the
Intelligence Committee found no evidence that the Russian hackers had actually
flipped votes or otherwise altered ballots, they were poised to “delete or
change voter data” in the state of Illinois. The fact that their preferred candidate won the election
made it unnecessary to alter votes.
In any case, the possibility of defrauding an election from either
domestic or foreign sources has become both eminent and imminent.
The House
allotted $380 million to help states update their electronic voting systems but
it failed to mandate paper ballot backups – the surest and simplest way to
protect the integrity of our electoral process. In the midterm election fourteen states used electronic
ballots without a paper trail for some significant portion of their voting
population. They included the
critical states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Texas and Tennessee. In 2020 the number will drop to eight,
including Texas and Tennessee. It
represents significant progress but it is hardly enough. The balance of power in the US Senate
may well be at stake. With the
antiquated systems operating in so many states, paper ballots should be
mandatory. [6, 7]
Congress has
also pointedly failed to establish triggers for audits or recounts in contested
elections. It has failed to put in
place stiff sanctions against foreign interference despite overwhelming
evidence that the threat is real.
It has failed to mandate prison sentences for deliberate denial of the
right to vote. It has failed to
put in place state of the art safeguards.
It has failed to establish stiff retaliatory sanctions for foreign
nationals who interfere in our elections.
In short, the
Republican Party is not currently interested in the integrity of our
elections. Behind their amoral
leadership, they are committed to winning at any cost. Democracy be damned!
It is not
certain that the Democrats would be any more scrupulous but it is certain that,
as long as Republicans control either house of congress, there will be no
serious attempt to secure the ballot box.
A nation that fails to protect the ballot box is a nation that does not
deserve to be called a free and fair republic.
1. “The Roots
of Voter Fraud in America.” By
Barbara Finlay. American History
Magazine, November-December 2016.
2. “Diebold
Indicted: Its spectre still haunts Ohio elections.” By Bob Fitrakis.
Columbus Free Press, October 31, 2013.
3. “Hackers
can easily break into voting machines across the US.” By Igor Derysh.
Salon, August 14, 2019.
4. “Russia
Targeted Election Systems in All 50 States, Report Finds.” By David E. Sanger and Catie
Edmondson. New York Times, July
25, 2019.
5. “McConnell
support for election security funds leaves Dems declaring victory.” By Maggie Miller and Jordain
Carney. The Hill, September 20,
2019.
6. “14 States
Forgo Paper Ballots Despite Security Warnings.” By Gopal Ratnam, Congressional Quarterly. Government Technology, October 31,
2018.
7. “Analysis
shows 12% could vote without paper backup in 2020.” By Mary Clare Jalonick. Associated Press, August 13, 2019.
8. National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Securing the Vote:
Protecting American Democracy. Washington,
DC: The National Academies Press.
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