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Comment by kaosjester | Hacker News Reader

It's a damn shame they only did it for the DNC.

Not only a damn shame, but in fact the reason that it can be claimed to have been a partisan attack and an attempt to sway the election one way or another.

We should have an open government, but it doesn't work properly if only one party's dirty laundry which is aired.

Both the DNC and the RNC are non-profit private organizations (IRS 527).

While I'm also interested in an open government, I think it's reasonable for both of those groups to expect to operate with some degree of privacy and autonomy.

Maybe those organizations should be regulated differently due to the tremendous amount of influence they have over our society.

Everything is an attempt to sway the election. When I say "Shillary Clinton", that's an attempt to sway the election.

Agreed. Maybe next time around they'll get the RNC. Perhaps then we will be ready for a third party, which is sorely needed IMHO.

In case you missed the recent news: they did hack the RNC too, but chose not to release any of that information. Presumably either to influence the election by making one side look worse than the other, or to have leverage over them by threatening blackmail... or both. That's one of the facets of this that is really disturbing.

More details here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-election-h...

I wasn't aware they also hacked the RNC. The article has conflicting information on how far they actually got though, and may not have actually gotten any useful information. The part about them (russians) doing it just to disrupt the confidence of democracy is interesting. The article doesn't actually state anything about blackmail or leverage though.

Hopefully something informative comes out of the investigation Obama ordered to be delivered before he leaves office.

According to your link the CIA thinks the RNC was hacked, but the FBI says they were unsuccessful; Did the FBI ever withdraw that claim?

We need to first lay the groundwork for a third party option to actually work. This means getting something like ranked-choice voting in place. Otherwise you're left with the winner take all system, and even if you had just 30% of the vote go to one candidate, if that was 2% more than all the other candidates, that one would win. It ends up forcing a two party system, b/c nothing else will allow smaller parties to emerge.

So for anyone who wants third party options, start pushing for their states to allow for ranked-choice voting in state wide elections.

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