RECLAIMING AMERICA: PROTECT THE BALLOT BOX

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.