I can’t believe that at least two years after we knew foreign governments were attacking our electoral process, we have federal and state governments still taking their rectal temperatures.  With their heads.  (You do get the image, right?) 

Here, in Alexandria, where I live, we finally dropped the paperless electronic voting machines.  Instead, we have to fill in a box (no, not like we did in kindergarten, a simple X will do) and then have our choices scanned into a reader.  

But, there are plenty of locations that are not protecting our voting choices  and/or personal information.   For example, the State of Georgia with its touch-screen voting systems.  Which, by the way, is only one of the five remaining states that are relying on totally paperless systems.   

Yet, the Georgian system has our un-encoded data (birthday, driver’s license number, at least a portion of one’s social security number)- and this has been hacked by “white hat” folks at least twice. Plus the supervisor passwords for the voting systems have  also been easily obtained. 

Nevertheless, Georgia is refusing to switch to paper ballots.  And, its election director (Secretary of State Brian Kemp) avers that the system is secure.  Oh, yeah- this guy also refuses all federal assistance to secure their imperfect system.   

Oh, sure, the state is worried that they can be the next laughing-stock (you DO recall the Florida hanging chad problem that led to the election of George Bush, right).  Which is why they adopted these Diebold systems in the first place more than a decade ago.  But, Diebold has not “hardened” their systems and the state has done nothing to secure voter data or supervisor passwords. 

It might not surprise you to know that Brian Kemp is running for governor.  And, he needs voter suppression to win.  (Georgia is one of the few states that had manifested population increases and voter registration decreases.  Think on that for a minute.)  It was he and Kris Kobach that invented the theme of “election integrity” which is a dog whistle for keeping Black folks from voting.  Failing that- maybe manipulating the vote will work.

It’s already been demonstrated (in a Federal court) that a memory card (one that is laden with malware) can alter the Georgia voting machines’ election results recorded and provided by these Diebold units.   

Of course, George declares that all their data is “air-gapped”.  That is supposed to mean there is no direct connection to the internet.  

But, what those USB keys?  They are exactly what is used to transfer ballot data (and many of the election officials plug those very same USB keys into their computers).  So much for that air-gap. 

And, let us not forget that it was Stuxnet, encoded on a slew of USB keys, that took down Iran’s centrifuges.  (Actually, the virus was specific for Siemens centrifuges- and that was the company that sold said centrifuges- despite the embargo- to Iran.) 

Then, there’s also the National Academy of Sciences report.  (Yes, I know that Kemp is one of TheDonald’s acolytes- which means science is probably not something he embraces.)  In the report’s 180 pages, they aver that there is absolutely no reason to not use paper ballots for this election (the one in November 2018.  But, only 29 states are doing so.

Hmm. Maybe that’s the goal.  To fix the election despite the choice of the voters.  After all, Georgia is among the folks who keep closing ballot boxes in Black neighborhoods, develop requirements for special ID’s that require folks to lose a day of work to obtain, etc.

I guess we’ll see in 33 days- or maybe it will take a few recounts (with rapidly changing data) to make it obvious how insecure our voting choices really are.