Pew Report: Two Thirds of Americans Think Russia Has Influenced Voting

The incredibly large volume of misinformation being shared by the right-wing wackos was exactly the same as that being shared by the extreme left. As time progressed and we tried to debunk the falsehoods, there was a cult-like tribal attitude among those mentioned above as they appeared almost in a rabid state, spewing lies from one end of the social media spectrum to the next. However, as we have found out, this was the Russian and Macedonian purveyors of false information was just the tip of the iceberg and it seemed to extend into areas regarding the American voting system that are still raising questions. 

This topic has been part of an undercurrent many in the United States seemed to share and in a new Pew Research Center report, it seems that 2/3 of Americans believe Russia and/or other nations do have access to influence our voting. While the article includes a number of areas on the topic of voting abilities, access, and even distrust, the most important piece states: 

“Two years after Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election, 67% of Americans say it is very or somewhat likely that either Russia or other foreign governments will try to influence the midterm elections. 

Fewer than half (45%) are very or somewhat confident that election systems are secure from hacking, with just 8% saying they are very confident in the security of election systems nationwide.

A major new survey of public attitudes on voting and elections in the U.S. was conducted by Pew Research Center from Sept. 24-Oct. 7 among 10,683 adults, supported by a grant from the Democracy Fund. It finds that, despite concerns over election security, Americans have very positive feelings about voting: Fully 91% say voting in elections is ‘important,’ while 68% say that ‘voting gives people like me some say about how government runs things.’” 

Unlikely States for Trump and Easy Voting Machine Hacking 

 As state after state that had low percentages for Trump began to show up in his favor, there were large numbers of people screaming that this wasn’t possible. Blue states suddenly turning red? Two states already listed as being pro-Hillary Clinton were Wisconsin and Michigan, and yet nearing the tail end of the campaign, Trump was “told” to go to both of these locations when he knew it was unlikely that he would win them. Yet one week before Election Day, he followed the instructions and appearing in both states. Many reports were coming through from other states indicating that the votes had been “flipped” to the wrong candidate. These were typically from those areas that used touch screen voting machines and the problem with these is there isn’t any backup paper trail. The New York Times featured an article entitled: “The Myth of the Hacker-Proof Voting Machine.”

The article includes: 

“In 2011, the election board in Pennsylvania’s Venango County — a largely rural county in the northwest part of the state — asked David A. Eckhardt, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, to examine its voting systems.” 

It continues with: 

“Eckhardt and his colleagues concluded that the problem with the machines, made by Election Systems & Software (ES&S), was likely a simple calibration error. But the experts were alarmed by something else they discovered. Examining the election-management computer at the county’s office — the machine used to tally official election results and, in many counties, to program voting machines — they found that remote-access software had been installed on it. 

Remote-access software is a type of program that system administrators use to access and control computers remotely over the internet or over an organization’s internal network. Election systems are supposed to be air-gapped — disconnected from the internet and from other machines that might be connected to the internet. The presence of the software suggested this wasn’t the case with the Venango machine, which made the system vulnerable to hackers. Anyone who gained remote access to the system could use the software to take control of the machine. Logs showed the software was installed two years earlier and used multiple times, most notably for 80 minutes on November 1, 2010, the night before a federal election.” 

As it turns out, this software was being used by a licensed contractor working from home, but it demonstrated that anyone has the ability to install software and potentially affect the outcome of these voting machines. 

I won’t even go into the recount process that Green Party Jill Stein instituted. There were reports by Poll Watchers showing voting machine seals having been broken in Wisconsin, and because these individuals were “volunteers”, a so-called fact-checking organization said the reports were false.

Voting machines are not supposed to be directly connected to the internet and supposedly have only one USB port connection for the purpose of downloading. This is not the case in many circumstances.

In the 2018 DefCon Conference in Las Vegas, NV, the world’s largest hacking conference, kids showed they could hack into a variety of voting machines. In an article by The Guardian they state: 

“It took an 11-year-old girl 10 minutes to do it.” 

The article also includes: 

“We know that Russia has done this before,” <Security Expert, Jake> Braun says. ‘They did it in the Ukraine, where they hacked Ukrainian election results on the government website. Fortunately, the Ukrainians caught it and shut the website down. But then the Russians announced that their candidate had won on RT, when he hadn’t.’ Disarray ensued, and the Russian press had a foothold from which to begin spreading the allegation that the winner of the election wasn’t legitimate. 

Unfortunately for Braun, unlike voting machines, there’s not a lot of interest in testing the security of the various states’ election websites. ‘It’s really important, it’s a huge vulnerability, but the adult down in the Village wouldn’t find this interesting, because they could do it in two minutes.” 

Cambridge Analytica Tied to Trump Campaign 

In 2017 I wrote an article: Cambridge Analytica: Psychological Manipulation for Brexit and Trump? 

“BBC devoted a lot of time in an expose on Cambridge Analytica. While this company is not alone in their approach to altering someone’s opinion through the use of crafted messaging, their CEO, Alexander Nix, explains that they have a bit of a different approach. Their combination of demographics, media and geographics assists in understanding the individual personality, likes, dislikes and how they can be altered to influence how someone votes.” 

This entire group has been indirectly tied to various members of the Trump supporters and eventually, the campaign. Since this time, we have found out an immense amount of additional information, including the theft of the DNC emails. 

Palmer Report did an expose article called: Donald Trump campaign caught red handed in DNC email theft: 

“For quite some time it’s been painfully clear that Russian government hackers and cyberterrorist group Wikileaks conspired to steal Democratic National Committee emails during the election, and released them in an attempt at helping Donald Trump. The trick has been proving what we instinctively already know: that the Trump campaign was in on this treasonous theft. Now it looks like Special Counsel Robert Mueller has that proof. 

Here’s what Paul Wood, from respected British publication The Spectator, just wrote as part of a lengthy expose: ‘An American lawyer I know told me that he was approached by a Cambridge Analytica employee after the election. They had the Clinton emails more than a month before they were published by WikiLeaks: ‘What should I do?’ Take this to Mueller, the lawyer replied.” Wait a minute here, because this sounds like it’s the whole ballgame. 

Cambridge Analytica was the voter data analysis arm of the Donald Trump campaign. This means the Trump campaign had the DNC emails long before WikiLeaks released them. That means someone involved with the theft gave the emails to the Trump campaign before any decision was made about releasing them to the public. If this individual followed the lawyer’s advice and went to Mueller, then it means Mueller has proof that the Trump campaign knowingly received stolen goods from a foreign enemy in an attempt at altering the outcome of the election. That’s not just collusion, it’s treason.” 

We Will Probably Never Know the Whole Truth 

Hillary Clinton tried to warn the nation and President Obama was blackmailed by Mitch McConnell to not release the information regarding the Russian interference. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter admitted to taking millions of dollars in payments from Russia for a variety of ads and what we now know was completely made up information disguised as “news.” When you add that the real news media (not Fox, as they are not a credible source), took advantage of the ratings Trump brought due to his outlandish and outrageous behavior and rhetoric, the American people were played for fools by every participant involved. 

We have to ask ourselves the question regarding voting interference: “What would happen if we found out all of our votes were affected?” The answer is, no one would bother to vote anymore and to avoid this happening, the truth may never be revealed. 

Just as so many of the government secrets aren’t released for fear of public outrage, we may have to rely on the actions and reactions of generations to come to circumvent these horrors. 

Of course, that all depends on the United States surviving these attacks. And the jury is still out on that one.

(S. Novi is a journalist who worked in the media and continues to seek out truth and integrity. A liberal and one who is suspicious of cults and empty promises. Her posts originate at Medium.com. She is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.