Surprise, Maryland

The title of this post is identical to the title of an article in the 23 July 2018 issue of the Washington Post. The subtitle is “Your election contractor has ties to Russia. And other states also remain vulnerable to vote tampering.” Senior officials have revealed that an Internet technology company with which the state contracts to hold electronic voting information is connected to a Russia oligarch who is “very close’ to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Maryland leaders did not know about the connection until the FBI told them.

Maryland is not a slacker on election security; it is regarded as being ahead of the curve relative to other states. So if even motivated states can be surprised, what about the real laggards?

Maryland’s exposure began when it chose a company to keep electronic information on voter registration, election results and other extremely sensitive data. Later this company was purchased by a firm run by a Russian millionaire and heavily invested in by a Kremlin-connected Russian billionaire. Currently the state does not have any sense that this Russia links have had any impact on the conduct of its elections, and it is scrambling to shore up its data handling before November’s voting. But the fact that the ownership change’s implications could have gone unnoticed by state officials is cause enough for concern. The quality of contractors that states employ to handle a variety of election-related tasks is just one of may concerns election-security experts have identified since Russia’s manipulation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Maryland has pushed to upgrade its election infrastructure. It rented new voting machines in advance of the 2016 vote to ensure that they have left a paper trail. State election officials note that they hire an independent auditor to conduct a parallel count based on those paper records, with automatic recounts if there is a substantial discrepancy between the two tallies. Observers note that the state could still do better, for example by conducting manual post-election audits as well as electronic ones. But Maryland is still far more responsible than many others.

Recently Politico’s Eric Geller surveyed 40 states about how they would spend new federal election-security funding Congress recently approved. Here are some depressing results: “only 13 states said they intend to use the federal dollars to buy new voting machines. At least 22 said they have no plans to replace their machines before election—including all five states that rely solely on electronic voting devices, which cybersecurity experts consider a top vulnerability. In addition almost no states conduct robust statistic-based post-election audits to look for evidence of tampering after the fact. And fewer than one-third of states and territories have requested a key type of security review from the Department of Homeland Security.”

Moreover, Congress seems uninterested in offering any more financial help, despite states’ glaring needs. Federal lawmakers, who are Republican, last week nixed a $380 million election-security measure.
So do not waste your time watching voter predictions and wonder whether there will be a “blue wave” to save the country from Trump. Russian election interference is guaranteed, and Trump, understandably is taking no action. So if there is no blue wave, Democrats will cry interference. If there is a “blue wave” Trump would claim interference even though such interference by Russia would make no sense, although Trump has already made this assertion. Mixed results and widespread dissatisfaction are the likely result. And perhaps a Constitutional Crisis.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Tags: blue wave, constitutional crisis, election-security, Eric Geller, Maryland, Russia, Trump, Vladimir, Washington Post