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Forget the Russians: Corrupt, Local Officials Are the Biggest Threat To Elections (securityledger.com)
chicksdaddy writes: Do you think that shadowy Russian hackers are the biggest threat to the integrity of U.S. elections? Think again. It turns out the bad actors in U.S. elections may be a lot more "Senator Bedfellow" than "Fancy Bear," according to Bev Harris, the founder of Black Box Voting. "It's money," Harris told The Security Ledger. "There's one federal election every four years, but there are about 100,000 local elections which control hundreds of billions of dollars in contract signings." Those range from waste disposal and sanitation to transportation."There are 1,000 convictions every year for public corruption," Harris says, citing Department of Justice statistics. "Its really not something that's even rare in the United States." We just don't think that corruption is a problem, because we rarely see it manifested in the ways that most people associate with public corruption, like violence or having to pay bribes to receive promised services, Harris said. But it's still there.
How does the prevalence of public corruption touch election security? Exactly in the way you might think. "You don't know at any given time if the people handling your votes are honest or not," Harris said. "But you shouldn't have to guess. There should be a way to check." And in the decentralized, poorly monitored U.S. elections system, there often isn't. At the root of our current problem isn't (just) vulnerable equipment, it's also a shoddy "chain of custody" around votes, says Eric Hodge, the director of consulting at Cyber Scout, which is working with the Board of Elections in Kentucky and in other states to help secure elections systems. That includes where and how votes are collected, how they are moved and tabulated and then how they are handled after the fact, should citizens or officials want to review the results of an election. That lack of transparency leaves the election system vulnerable to manipulation and fraud, Harris and Hodge argue.
How does the prevalence of public corruption touch election security? Exactly in the way you might think. "You don't know at any given time if the people handling your votes are honest or not," Harris said. "But you shouldn't have to guess. There should be a way to check." And in the decentralized, poorly monitored U.S. elections system, there often isn't. At the root of our current problem isn't (just) vulnerable equipment, it's also a shoddy "chain of custody" around votes, says Eric Hodge, the director of consulting at Cyber Scout, which is working with the Board of Elections in Kentucky and in other states to help secure elections systems. That includes where and how votes are collected, how they are moved and tabulated and then how they are handled after the fact, should citizens or officials want to review the results of an election. That lack of transparency leaves the election system vulnerable to manipulation and fraud, Harris and Hodge argue.
I live in a rural city in South Carolina and I can say first hand that there is total election fraud going on in this state. I was an election observer during the 2016 Presidential election - that is - for about 20 minutes.
From the get-go, election officials repeatedly turned away minority voters for "technical issues" with their voter registrations. They only provided provisional ballots to those who absolutely demanded them. Not a single white person was turned away or had "technical issues" during the time I was observing, which lasted until I was escorted out by police for trying to bring this to the attention of the higher ups. I was threatened with charges for interfering with an election and given a trespass warning until the end of the day.
South Carolina is corrupt through and through. It would probably be a blue state were it not for corrupt election officials in the rural counties making sure that whites and republicans won.
Where I live, the Democratic party has a total lock on municipal government. No elected official has been a Republican in 30+ years. The last Republican mayor's term ended in 1961. I think the last non-Democratic elected official was the city councilor for my ward in the early 1990s, and he was an "independent".
When one party controls the city government, you don't need to cheat at the ballot box to have corruption because the party already controls who can get elected. Even without criminal intent, you wind up with a narrow group of people who ultimately control an awful lot of resources without much oversight.
And it's not like the outcome would be any different had the party roles been reversed, it's the lack of active competition that's the problem.
Oh I don't know. I think parts of the country are fairly far along in that regard. Take the 11 California counties which have more registered voters than citizens eligible to vote: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
In one particular county that was at 144% registration a 66% turnout means we got 99.3% of the citizenry to turn out to vote. Quite the miracle...
The problem with Florida, was Algore, or his "group" wanted to hand pick counties to recount. Instead of recounting the entire state, he wanted to pick only areas they knew would be heavily democratic. Plus, had Ralph Nader not run, Al Gore more than likely would have been elected, just as Bush 41 would have been elected, had Ross Perot not run in 92. Personally, I'd like to see ALL electronic voting of any kind, done away with. Every ballot should be paper, with an X or similar to denote who you pick. Plus, I'd like to see everyone that votes, have their index finger dipped in that hard to remove purple ink you see in a lot of 3rd world countries, along with everyone that votes, should present a government issued photo ID. (for those that have a hardship, the ID should be given at no cost). Sometimes, I think the corruption in elections is a backhanded way to make people think "what difference does it make" to the point they don't bother voting, so our soft tyranny we have now, can be transformed into a hard tyranny, or dictatorship. If you look at it now, we already have 2 classes of people. The politicians and the surfs (citizens). How many laws are on the books now, that WE as citizens must obey, but, those elected, do not. Obamacare, Social Security, insider trading and what not. They make laws for us, but then exempt themselves from those same laws.
Corruption isn't correctly measured by the amount of money involved. It is best measured by the impact on individuals.
Wasting millions on failed urban renewal or public housing is a tragedy and a crime. Taking the guns of an elderly veteran because of a mistaken Social Security number is a tragedy also, and a crime. Denying a farmer the use of their land to establish a pond for irrigation and livestock is a crime and a tragedy. Choking a man to death, even inadvertently, because he was selling cigarettes one-at-a-time, without a license, on the street, is a crime and a tragedy.
It's never really about the money. It's about the people who could have done something else, productive or not, with that money. It's about the people who live diminished lives and who are broken in spirit. It;s about people killed, killed, because power corrupted those in power.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I have a relative who works as a sysadmin for a local water district. Technically these things are run by a publicly-elected board. In this particular district, the board was long ago populated by a bunch of contractors who primarily get their business from... the water district. So now, the "public election" means that there's a tiny classified ad buried in the back of some newspaper to advertise the election, the board members vote themselves back in every year, and they've got an understanding with the district employees that as long as the right contractors (the board) keep winning the bids, they'll generally vote for whatever budget items are requested by the staff.
Corrupt as hell, but it's local, and there aren't hardly any journalists around to report on things like that, and if there were the story probably wouldn't get any news time because it's more important to talk about the Kardashians or something.
Well, sort of. I'll explain:
My 'neighborhood' in the Oregon Coastal Range has a population density of 14/sq. mi., and I know (and often hang out with) 10 of them personally (there's one family that's gone all the time, so we rarely get to see them. One of the "people" they count in that density is the local timber company, who owns logging lease property out behind mine). The nearest town to my house (20 miles away) has barely 2,000 souls in it.
Let's just say the population base is real small out here.
Now - you are absolutely correct that 25 people can turn an election out here. However, rural folk tend to be a lot more independent, and far less likely to be cowed into not voting. You should attend a school board and/or RFPD meeting sometime - we're *loud* and *proud* about our opinions, right or wrong. Given the secrecy of votes and the fact that all of our votes are mailed to the County Seat to be counted (welcome to Oregon), nobody in our little town has a clue as to who actually voted, and/or for what and whom they voted. You can infer it on rare occasion (e.g. Joe Candidate only got six votes, and he has five close adult relatives and a spouse), but you'll never know for sure.
Rural politics is a lot more personal than the city. No anonymity here - you can meet and talk with the candidate(s), and the candidate(s) spend most of their politicking face-to-face or through mailers. You won't see them in a televised debate (because it's hard to watch the local cable public access channel when everyone has satellite), TV ads are prohibitively expensive, and rarely will you hear 'em on the radio (unless there's a local AM station.) Winning the attention game (as you aptly put it) means the candidate (and every surrogate he has) often goes plodding from door-to-door, usually making his case in person, or at any local gathering (churches, the local Elks meeting, whatever). The local grapevines are also a very common means of spreading word about positions, ideology, etc (but you run the risk of playing the 'telephone game', as usual.) It's a far cry from the slick TV commercials and local TV news coverage/debates/etc that the city candidates get.
Oh, and one other thing - if the candidate is a bastard, everyone will know it long before he announces his candidacy. Half the town near my home knows me on a first-name basis, knows what I do for a living, knows my wife, knows which church I go to, has a very good idea of my income, my politics, etc etc. I also know who the prominent folks are, know which ones are worthless, and so does everyone else. This tends to keep the stereotypical 'local tinpot tyrants' at bay.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?