back to article Foreign spies hijacking US mid-terms? FBI, CISA are cool as cucumbers about it

The FBI and the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) claim any foreign interference in the 2022 US midterm elections is unlikely to disrupt or prevent voting, compromise ballot integrity, or manipulate votes at scale. Per a public service announcement [PDF], the agencies have found zero …

  1. quxinot

    There's been election fraud since elections were a thing. The question is just if it's been caught or not.

    1. martinusher Silver badge

      Its a strange thing but you'll never find an election worker alleging fraud. There's lots of wild and woolly theories from people who have never worked an election which is why I suppose election workers are the new target.

      There is a reason why gerrymandering, roll purging and other techniques are so common -- the actual election is difficult to fiddle, if nothing else statistics catches you out. So you just work on deciding who gets to vote, whether or not its easy or difficult for segments of the electorate to vote and, of course, overseeing and certifying the results.

      Incidentally, ballot boxes need to be light but strong and preferably collapsible for easy storage. Its a bit of a niche market but there's already companies making very similar products. Luggage. So let's have no more of this 'suitcases full of ballots' BS -- they're not suitcases, they're ballot boxes. Yes, they look the same from a distance. So?

      1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

        Ding ding ding! I worked 30 elections in Texas. (Travis county--almost as left as San Fransisco.) Saw statistical evidence of fraud between my first & second as an election election judge. Had an attempt to vote by a non-citizen who stated, "That never stopped me in Houston."

        Oh yeah, then there was that infamous precinct (101) which had 0 registered voters, but almost always managed to record a vote.

        I also know when & how some of the changes in the procedure that were used over the years changed what could be done in terms of corrupting the process.

        Then there's my daughter, who, in Washington state doing block walking to registered voters, came across non-citizens who were on the rolls weekly. And let's not forget the governor's race when a Seattle precinct had 101% voter turnout, and the judge refused to do anything about it.

        Or, if you like something that's easy to confirm, in 2020 (yes, THAT 2020), we had a candidate for the legislature _publicly_ thank the post office workers for inserting her flyers into the mail. Yes--that's one of the few ways that election fraud violates federal law (interfering with the mail).

        Not to mention, light most people with an awareness of IT security, I was screaming from the rooftops about the insanity of electronic voting as soon as I heard about the idea. I didn't change my position recently.

        In truth, in most jurisdictions, there are a lot of safeguards in place to prevent election fraud. And I have found myself explaining to people that various dubious-sounding events are in fact not suggestive of fraud. But if you've worked enough elections, and you are intelligent and pay attention, you're going to come to understand that it's happening.

    2. AVee

      Actually, the first question is 'has it been significant'. If millions are voting you can actually afford a small error rate. This is why good old fashioned paper ballots worked just fine. Yes, there are some counting errors, spoiled ballots and probably some fraud to. But it's really difficult to commit fraud on a scale that is actually significant. You would have to run a pretty big operation, which is bound to be detected.

      A district based first to the post system makes it more feasible, sometimes you can flip a district with a few votes. (So get a normal voting system, like in developed countries, if you are worried about that. It comes with several other advantages.)

      Don't replace the people counting with computers all running the same code. And some central system where all the results are processed. And all that operated by just a handful of people. Suddenly fraud that actually has a significant impact on the outcome is feasible.

  2. Claptrap314 Silver badge

    So all those claims about the 2016 elections being influenced by foreign actors...what about them?

    Seriously, it's MUCH harder for a foreign actor to throw an election than it is to make it LOOK like it's being thrown. In 2016, the FSB provided the Clinton campaign with a ridiculous dossier on her opponent--so that her victory would be tainted. That same FSB ran a bunch of web sites attacking her--so that her loss would be tainted.

    Actually stealing an election? Leave that one to the locals.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      We know the 2020 election was hijacked as they told us they did it:

      https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

      Trump has many faults but he was not one of the political ruling class and threatened to destabilise the illusion of a 2 party system in the US. And they are still running scared of the Ultra MAGA.

      1. martinusher Silver badge

        Don't look at the magician, look at the people behind the curtain. Trump was just the showman that's used to distract you.

        The open secret of the 2020 campaign was the disciplined approach of the opposition. This isn't fiddling the election, this is how politics should work. The discipline held even up to January 6th. when opposition groups were dissuaded from counter demonstrating -- this handiwork was going to be 100% MAGA.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Trump was Toto and the people behind the curtain ran scared. They tried for a Reichstag moment with Jan 6th but still can't make anything stick. All the political theatre is just to keep the masses riled up and stop them thinking. CNN, Fox, MSNPC.. all the same.

      2. veti Silver badge

        Thank you for that link, that was interesting.

        Just one question: how can you possibly read it as 'hijacking' the election? It describes a perfectly normal, completely legitimate campaign to make sure that the election wasn't hijacked.

        Trump lost. In fact, in four short years, Trump lost the House (twice), the Senate and the White House, making him one of the biggest losers in American political history. Worse than Warren Harding or Herbert Hoover. Almost as bad as Buchanan.

        So much losing.

        1. Cederic Silver badge

          Hang on. A normal, completely legitimate campaign to change election processes in contravention with the law?

          A normal, completely legitimate campaign to set up mobs to storm the streets if they lose?

          A normal, completely legitimate campaign to use private money to pay State officials to run the elections a certain way?

          Yes, a normal, completely legitimate campaign.

          1. veti Silver badge

            A campaign to change election processes by updating outmoded laws, sure. A campaign to organise protests if the other side stole the election - which, let's remember, they absolutely did try to do - what's wrong with that? If, say, Michigan or Wisconsin had decided to overrule their own voters and throw their votes the other way - and again, this is more than just a hypothetical, this is something that both sides seriously thought could happen - then street protests would have been very much in order.

            And please point me to where it talks about paying off state officials, I seem to have missed that.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "Just one question: how can you possibly read it as 'hijacking' the election? It describes a perfectly normal, completely legitimate campaign to make sure that the election wasn't hijacked."

          They ensured the election went their way. To protect 'democracy' they want you to vote for their person and no-one else. A bunch of very wealthy people spent a lot of money to support one side in an election and the zuckbot has been investigated for just that.

          How is this different from the supposed 'russian interference' or the 'right wing memes' that supposedly swayed the (stupid redneck) voters to vote for the orange man in 2016?

          The whole election system in the US is fundamentally broken especially with the amount of money being spent. I was over there just before the 2012 elections and the ads on TV were bloody hilarious.

          "<candidate B> did bad things and will pass laws that will be bad, paid for by people who support <candidate A>"

          "<candidate A> claims that <candidate B> is going to do bad things but actually <candidate A> is going to do bad things, paid for by people who like <candidate B>"

          "<candidate B> is claiming that <candidate A> is going to do bad things but the reality is <candidate B> will do these things so vote for <candidate A>, paid for by people who like <candidate A>"

          And repeat for pretty much an entire advert break.

          There is video of election workers telling people how to fill out the ballots as they reach the door of the poling place, people repeatedly visiting drop boxes with handfuls of envelopes and quite a few cases of people being convicted of ballot harvesting or forgery at care homes.

          1. veti Silver badge

            *A bunch of very wealthy people" supported both sides. That's how elections work in the US. It's incredibly unfair and buttock-clenchingly ugly, but no one has yet come up with a better way.

            It differs from the Russian campaign in 2016 in all sorts of ways: it was homegrown (conceived and run by Americans), authentic (people participated openly using their own names or identities), sincere (they wanted to make the USA a better place), voluntary (only a handful of staffers were paid, the great majority simply acted out of patriotism). The Russian intervention in 2016 was none of these things.

            Yes, the US elections system is a thing of horror. There are various ways it could be reformed, but "reform" meets stiff opposition for the same reason it always does: because there is a whole class of people who have learned to do very well out of the status quo, and any serious reform would threaten all their livelihoods.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              The bunch of wealthy people admitted to doing it in secret and in the shadows. Again their *own* words.

              The zuckbot spent over $400 million.

              As I've said in other threads, the orange man was neither GOP or Dem and they were both running scared as he was upsetting the whole finely balanced and very thin veil of 'democracy' in the US. There is very little difference between the likes of moscow mitch, graham, nadler, schiff, pelosi. They have different letters by their names and they vote for 'their interest groups' (translation: the people who pay them the most) but they are cut from the same cloth.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        To believe the election was stolen you would have to believe in a vast conspiracy involving thousands of election workers, hundreds of election officials (many Republican), all the judges who threw out the court cases (many appointed by Trump), his own justice department, the FBI, the several independent reviews of the election after the fact and many others. Its nuts.

        The biggest thing that should make you think the election was fair is this. If the Democrats did somehow have an amazing vote rigging system (that probably somehow involves Venezuela and Italian satellites) why did they do so badly in all the other elections apart from the presidency? Surely they would also have rigged the house and senate to give them working majorities as well as the state level elections to put Democratic governors and other down level officials in place in as many states as possible.

        All the nonsense about stolen elections is just Trump cannot accept that he is a loser.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          So, I am guessing the downvoters are among the morons who believe in the conspiracy. Never mind. Some people are born stupid. Some work hard at it.

      4. DrSunshine0104

        You should work on your reading comprehension and sit for your high-school civics classes again. What the article is describing is not hijacking but politics in action. A candidate being such a rubbish person that section of party actively campaigns against them is not illegal, it is not hijacking, it is campaigning.

        I tend to vote Democratic in anything above local elections because I think state and national platforms for the opposing party is against my self interest and those I care about. Not because Democrats are 'my party'. I swear the fact we have a two party system and some states enforce a 'straight-ticket' has melted people brains about what a healthy democracy looks like and what is legal.

  3. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge

    Does it even matter anymore?

    After reading this article this morning, it just confirmed my long-held suspicion that, apart from some small setbacks on the march, Fascism in the US can no longer be stopped. Why would foreign actors even bother, apart from accelerating the process?

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/06/the-most-terrifying-case-of-all-is-about-to-be-heard-by-the-us-supreme-court

    (yes, it's from the Guardian, but I don't see anything that isn't elementary wrong and it matches the pattern long seen since checks and balances went out the window in the US)

    1. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: Does it even matter anymore?

      There might have been some interest in Trump in Europe for the 2016 election but that was because HRC was seen as a warmonger. Times have moved on.

      Now if I wanted to do as much damage to the US as possible I'd leave them to it, adopting a strictly hands-off policy.

      There's some mileage in the notion that a country like Russia would be very interested in the power of social media. Its not to effect change in other countries so much as to gauge how it could be used against them.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Does it even matter anymore?

        >Now if I wanted to do as much damage to the US as possible I'd leave them to it, adopting a strictly hands-off policy.

        Or at least I wouldn't care who won and wouldn't try and change who won - but I would put a lot of effort into making it so that a large bit of the population don't believe it

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Does it even matter anymore?

      Indeed. The minor setback in 2016 didn't manage to stop the tide. They seem to be back on plan. It is a shame that people didn't see through the ever so thin veneer that has been American democracy sooner.

    3. Cederic Silver badge

      Re: Does it even matter anymore?

      I find this less extreme than the multiple states that have enacted laws saying that the moment enough other states put in place a comparable law, they'll switch to supporting the popular vote candidate irrespective of their own state's voting.

      At least the thing in front of the Supreme Court of the US requires elected officials to represent the people that elected them.

      The article isn't exactly balanced either, full of hyperbole and entirely one-sided. Why has this case been brought, why did the Supreme Court of the US accept it, and why wasn't the possibility that they wanted to establish clarity (which could include rejecting the position put to them) to strengthen trust in the democratic process?

      If the case prevails, I don't see that following the US Constitution represents fascism in the US. You perhaps aren't aware of how it came into being, but please, take my assurances that the people involved were highly anti-authoritarian.

  4. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Simple solution

    No electronic voting device = no hacking.

    == Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

    1. Stork Silver badge

      Re: Simple solution

      It’s not that simple. Labour proved that postal votes could be manipulated in Britain, but in principle it is easier to make large scale fraud to electronic voting.

      I believe Putin’s goal in 2016 was to create doubt about the election as much as getting a particular result, even if he preferred Trump to Clinton.

      1. Potemkine! Silver badge

        When something works, don't break it.

        Labour proved that postal votes could be manipulated

        This is not hacking ^^

        It's much easier to control "physical" votes rather than digital informations. The latter can be corrupted without anyone's knowledge. No digital system is safe.

        There are plenty of countries where there's no problem when voting with an envelope and a paper with a name on it. No large scale fraud there. There are only risks to introduce voting machines.

        == Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

  5. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Let's remember Trumpf lost the popular vote *twice*

    And won the first time because some of the electorial college (a holdover from the days when it took weeks to cross the continent on horseback which has never been sorted out) voted Republican instead of reflecting how their state actually voted.

    Fun fact about the Supreme Court in the US. It receives 7000 petitions for appeal.

    It actions 70 (1%) of them.

    It had a reputation for improving US society. Now that shrub and trumpf packed it with a bunch of corporate and evangelical friendly judges that has gone down the pan. :-(

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Let's remember Trumpf lost the popular vote *twice*

      The electoral college prevents the very densely populated (mostly coastal) cities from dominating the process, and rightly so. The US presidential election is not a popular vote.

      In the UK people outside London and the home counties moan about how politics is dominated by London and the home counties.

      If the US went to popular vote then it would be dominated by the big cities of the north east and the coastal cities of central and southern California. And in Cali you often have a single party on the ballot due to the way they run the primaries. I'd expect that from Russia or some ex-Spanish tin-pot despotic state.

      1. Binraider Silver badge

        Re: Let's remember Trumpf lost the popular vote *twice*

        Perhaps you have failed to notice that First Past the Post in your vaunted electoral college means that if you are a Democrat voter living in Redneck backwater US, your vote has zero impact on the outcome.

        And equally, Redneck backwater folks moving to Southern California are up against as much an electoral wall created by FPTP to the point there is little point in the "opposition" going to the expense of fielding candidates.

        On popular vote, Hilary Won. And similarly, in the UK, on the popular vote, the Tories would not command a 64 seat lead despite landing less than 50% of the popular vote (just 43% in fact).

        First past the post should be consigned to the dustbin by the three countries that still have it. It is a tool designed by oligarchs to preserve oligarchy.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Let's remember Trumpf lost the popular vote *twice*

          The UK system is deeply flawed as we like to have 'our local MP'. A 'local MP for local people' so to speak. As often the voting is done on local as well as national policies. The north/south divide is similar to the middle/coast divide in the US. There is a great deal of simple inertia from people who are used to the system and as you say a great deal of reluctance from the ruling classes as it will upset the gravy train they are used to.

          I'm very much of the opinion that if you want to be a politician you should be disqualified from being one.

          1. Binraider Silver badge

            Re: Let's remember Trumpf lost the popular vote *twice*

            PR with named local MP's is still possible.

            Specifically, Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMPR) allows for this. It's a system notably used in Germany and New Zealand, amongst others.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Let's remember Trumpf lost the popular vote *twice*

              Indeed. It is used in many places and seems to work well. When we did have a choice in changing the electoral system it was between the current system and potentially the only worse system in the known universe. When the people with a vested interest in the status quo get to pick the options you know it will never include a better one. Just like the tory leadership. Pick the worst 2 possible for the final vote.

              1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

                Re: Let's remember Trumpf lost the popular vote *twice*

                You should have done what we did.

                Have a referendum with FPTP and a laundry list of alternative systems and then claim that the result was no clear preference for one of the alternatives

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Let's remember Trumpf lost the popular vote *twice*

        >The electoral college prevents the very densely populated (mostly coastal) cities from dominating the process, and rightly so. The US presidential election is not a popular vote.

        That's why the only sensible solution is one state-one vote

        Why should California and New York dominate when N. Dakota has as much right?

        In fact we could stop people in big cities, like Washington, voting at all !

  6. Real Ale is Best
    Mushroom

    You are mistaken.

    Your systems are already owned.

  7. normal1

    I'm more concerned with domestic GOP spies being above American justice, because republican.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That would only put them on par with the dems. Isn't a high ranking dem living with a known Chinese spy?

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        I know Trump accused her of being a Chinese agent, but i'm not sure even the former President Accused Senator McConnell of being a democrat

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          He called him a RINO a few times. But then moscow mitch hates the orange man.

          One can only hope that a good third party comes along with some liberal policies similar to MAGA. The full on libertarians are a little strange.

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            > some liberal policies similar to MAGA

            Tough on muslims/women/gays/blacks, tough on the causes of muslims/women/gays/blacks ?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              That is the false progressive policy. Keep groups perpetually oppressed while giving the impression you are the only ones who can help them but never actually do help them.

              Remember it is FAR cheaper for a company to give travel money to a women to have an abortion than it is to provide maternity pay. The company gets to look 'progressive' in the eyes of the baying mob but the reality is they are keeping their staff in low paid servitude. Fixing problems doesn't make money. Homelessness, gun control, covid, inner city violence.

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