McConnell Is Blocking Any Plan to Prevent a Russian Election Attack in 2020

[Edge-]

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2...mpression=true

The House Judiciary Committee held hearings today on the Mueller report and its devastating findings of the Trump campaign efforts to collude with Russia, and Trump’s obstruction of justice thereof. The Republican message, articulated by ranking member Doug Collins, is that this is all in the distant past — the Mueller report came out in early spring; it’s already late spring — and we should focus on the future. “We’re not bringing Russians front and center,” he complained. “If we were attacked, then the priorities should be to go on the battlefields and not to the sideshow.”

Funny thing about that: There actually are a lot of bills to safeguard the 2020 elections from the next Russian attack. Mitch McConnell is blocking all of them.

The New York Times reported a few days ago that McConnell is refusing to bring to a vote any bill to safeguard the elections from foreign attack. There’s a Democratic bill to provide election funding to state and local governments. There’s a bipartisan Senate bill to “codify cyberinformation-sharing initiatives between federal intelligence services and state election officials, speed up the granting of security clearances to state officials, and provide federal incentives for states to adopt paper ballots.” McConnell won’t allow any of them to come to a vote.

The threat from Russian election interference is actually quite severe. Russian intelligence breached at least one Florida county computer system and planted malware in a manufacturer of vote-tabulating machines, according to the Mueller report. While the probability that Russian hackers could actually change the outcome of the next election is low, the consequences would be extraordinarily high — especially if they do so by actual vote-rigging rather than mere information warfare.

Exactly why McConnell is so blasé about this threat is impossible to say, but the next time McConnell takes some action that sacrifices his partisan interests for the greater good will be the first.

Of course, Collins’s whole notion that guarding against the next Russian political operation requires halting all investigation of the last one is obviously disingenuous in the first place. The Mueller report shows in detail that Trump and almost everybody working for him welcomed Russian help, legal or otherwise. The reason the government isn’t doing more to protect our democracy from the next attack is that the people who cooperated with the last attack don’t want to.

Why won't McConnell and Senate Republicans act to protect the US against foreign interference in our elections? I don't think they'd have stood for this if Harry Reid had been the "Grim Reaper" for election protection legislation, why aren't the in an uproar over McConell's seeming unwillingness to pass legislation improving the security of elections?

[Elegiac]

Why won't McConnell and Senate Republicans act to protect the US against foreign interference in our elections?

Two reasons, one of which is slightly more tin-foiled than the other.

The first, and most likely, is that McConnell is simply sticking to his strategy of not bringing any bills up for consideration that Trump won't sign. And signing a bill to focus on election security is a tacit admission that it was lacking in the last election - and Cadet Bonespurs won't brook anything that tarnishes the supposed legitimacy of his victory in 2016.

The second, less likely but still possible, is that they aren't doing anything because they think it will benefit them.

[rda]

The article is exaggerating to the moon and back. No, the Mueller's report does not contain any "devastating findings of the Trump campaign efforts to collude with Russia", and this recount of the interference "Russian intelligence breached at least one Florida county computer system and planted malware in a manufacturer of vote-tabulating machines" is much ado about pretty much nothing. The "breach" of the "at least one Florida county computer system" is an exploratory phishing email and the computer system was not related in any way to vote counting, and the "planted malware in a manufacturer of vote-tabulating machines" is a similar wide phishing attempt, with none of this resulting in anything further, no data gathered, nothing ever transmitted, no hosts ever connecting from the outside, no commands ever executed, nothing at all.

That said, is there any list of "bills to safeguard the 2020 elections from the next Russian attack" that is being refused anywhere? Maybe looking into what these bills contain will shed some light into why specifically they are being "denied".

[Donatello Trumpi]

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2...mpression=true



Why won't McConnell and Senate Republicans act to protect the US against foreign interference in our elections?

He is. He is supporting the wall and voter ID.

inbe4 millions of illegals have no impact on our elections but russia spending 100k on facebook ads destroys our democracy!

[Edge-]

inbe4 millions of illegals have no impact on our elections

Citation needed that illegal immigrants have any impact on election results. You know what with there being no evidence of any widespread voting by illegal immigrants and whatnot.

Your lies are getting lazier and lazier. It's cute that you think "THE WALL" will stop cyber-attacks against our election infrastructure.

[Elegiac]

He is. He is supporting the wall and voter ID.

White supremacy doesn't improve election security, unless the attack you're guarding against is a surfeit of brown voters.

inbe4 millions of illegals have no impact on our elections but russia spending 100k on facebook ads destroys our democracy!

Facts hurt, don't they.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

He is. He is supporting the wall and voter ID.

inbe4 millions of illegals have no impact on our elections but russia spending 100k on facebook ads destroys our democracy!

I don’t think Russia Facebook adds do much or any thing but do you have any thing to point to said immigrants having an impact?

[Donatello Trumpi]

Citation needed that illegal immigrants have any impact on election results. You know what with there being no evidence of any widespread voting by illegal immigrants and whatnot.

Your lies are getting lazier and lazier. It's cute that you think "THE WALL" will stop cyber-attacks against our election infrastructure.

"We find that some noncitizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and congressional elections," wrote Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha, both of Old Dominion University, and David C. Earnest of George Mason University.

"Noncitizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress."


http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-cont...hman-et-al.pdf

I'm beginning to understand how Ghostcrawler felt when some infantile nerds accused him of lying because he told them uncomfortable truths.

[Independent voter]

.

Exactly why McConnell is so blasé about this threat is impossible to say


Can't New York Magazine call McConnell's office and ask them to explain the senator's actions?

Article seems so one sided.

[Eveningforest]

Very simply summed up: the man has been in revenge mode against the Democrats since Robert Bork. He is the ultimate version of the unfortunate 'stick it to the libs' philosophy, no matter the costs.

Just a couple of months ago, Frontline had an episode on the evolution of bi-partisanship of the Supreme Court. It gives a nice overview of the many battles over judges, the Federalists of the 1980s and covers McConnel in some detail. Scary guy.

For a rainy afternoon: https://www.pbs.org/video/supreme-revenge-mirydp/

[Edge-]

"We find that some noncitizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and congressional elections," wrote Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha, both of Old Dominion University, and David C. Earnest of George Mason University.

"Noncitizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress."


http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-cont...hman-et-al.pdf

I'm beginning to understand how Ghostcrawler felt when some infantile nerds accused him of lying because he told them uncomfortable truths.

Judicialwatch, fucking lol.

Why wasn't this included in Trumps "VOTER FRAUD" panel then?

Taking the least conservative measure e at least one indicator showed that the respondent voted e yields an estimate that between 7.9% and 14.7% percent of non-citizens voted in 2008. Since the adult noncitizen population of the United States was roughly 19.4 million (CPS, 2011), the number of non-citizen voters (including both uncertainty based on normally distributed sampling error, and the various combinations of verified and reported voting) could range from just over 38,000 at the very minimum to nearly 2.8 million at the maximum.

2.8 million votes is a lot, and there would be a lot more data/studies that backed this up if it was actually the case and not just a bullshit study.

Good data should be repeatable. Do you have more confirmation from non-hot-garbage "FAKE NEWS" sites?

[Donatello Trumpi]

Judicialwatch, fucking lol.

Why wasn't this included in Trumps "VOTER FRAUD" panel then?



2.8 million votes is a lot, and there would be a lot more data/studies that backed this up if it was actually the case and not just a bullshit study.

Good data should be repeatable. Do you have more confirmation from non-hot-garbage "FAKE NEWS" sites?

You do know that the site only hosted the pdf, the research has nothing to do with them?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...61379414000973


And its cute that you think facts are a popularity contest.

[Yetanothernewbie]

"We find that some noncitizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and congressional elections," wrote Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha, both of Old Dominion University, and David C. Earnest of George Mason University.

"Noncitizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress."


http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-cont...hman-et-al.pdf

I'm beginning to understand how Ghostcrawler felt when some infantile nerds accused him of lying because he told them uncomfortable truths.

Is it because both yourself and Ghostcrawler consistently post bullshit "facts" from places that most people should not trust for the time let alone whatever horseshit they are peddling. Because people will call you out for your idiocy and rightly so.

[Elegiac]

You do know that the site only hosted the pdf, the research has nothing to do with them?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...61379414000973

Why haven't the results been repeatably verified.

[Edge-]

You do know that the site only hosted the pdf, the research has nothing to do with them?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...61379414000973


And its cute that you think facts are a popularity contest.

I'm aware of that and I followed the link back to the hosting site. It was still unimpressed with what I saw and am wondering if you can find other studies that mirror these findings from reputable sources.

Because again - if this was all so obvious and widespread, why did Trump have to shut down his "voter-fraud" commission run by one of the guys profiting off of the "VOTER FRAUD" hoax to the tune of a few million, Kris Kobach.

https://www.propublica.org/article/k...rtroom-defeats

More reading for how he's functionally been spending years fucking over local cities/counties in his state by helping them create illegal and un-enforceable voter-fraud protections despite there being no data to suggest those ordinances were remotely necessary.

[Donatello Trumpi]

Why haven't the results been repeatably verified.

Because you guys censor, screech, scream, assault and demonetize people who go against your imperative.

[Elegiac]

Because you guys censor, screech, scream, assault and demonetize people who go against your imperative.

How was this study conducted in the first place, then?

[Edge-]

Because you guys censor, screech, scream, assault and demonetize people who go against your imperative.

Who has been censored? Why is "screaching and screaming" apparently enough to prevent researchers from doing their research? Who has been assaulted for doing voter fraud research? What does demonitization, something unique to platforms like YouTube, have anything to do with academic research?

Are you just playing conservative buzzword Bingo or something? Because with the free square I think you've got enough for a Bingo. Congrats.

[Donatello Trumpi]

How was this study conducted in the first place, then?

Because it was before the refugee crisis, before every media outlet told you to hate trump (and generally before the leftist insanity reached full swing yet).
Such a study was still not popular then, but it would have faced much much more backlash in todays climate.

[Elegiac]

Because it was before the refugee crisis, before every media outlet told you to hate trump (and generally before the leftist insanity reached full swing yet).

Illegal immigration has been a "problem" according to you people for decades. Why aren't there previous studies that corroborate this?