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Comment by Fej | Hacker News Reader

That's not just a hypothetical. From the article:

> It also landed hours after Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, personally stepped forward to block consideration of a package of election security bills.

The Republicans are rejecting election security bills precisely because Russia has intervened to their benefit, and will probably continue to do so. President Trump has also openly asked for interference from Russia, if memory serves.

These attacks are acts of war and we need to start treating them as such. That won't happen as long as those attacks benefit those in power.

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There is no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines. The committee found no evidence that voter data in the Illinois voter database was deleted or changed.

The report do not say that Russia intervened in regard to voting machines or the Illinois voter database. The report simply state that Russia were in a position to do so.

A few years ago there were a bunch of leaks from inside NSA by Snowden. One of of the leaks documented how NSA had hacked into core telecom routers of a country in the middle of a civil war. NSA was very much in the position to intervene for either side.

The US would be in quite many wars if everything NSA did should be seen as acts of war and treated as such. They even hacked the UN.

To quote a headline from the Esquire:

"We're Supposed to Believe the Russians Hacked Into Voting Systems But Did Nothing Once They Got There?"

It would seem that the first step would be to delegitimize those election results and any ensuing laws or orders from those officials.

Then de-legitimization might become a weapon of its own right...

The problem is that if/when the Democrats win, the Republicans will use the same tactics and delegitimize those election results. We are effectively living in two forked realities with no way to rejoin them.

If it’s a problem of election fraud then we can fix this in 2020 with all paper ballots and a restoration of the voting rights act.

Unfortunately violence might be necessary if fair elections can’t be guaranteed.

In some other countries, foreign election monitors are routinely invited to monitor elections. They aren't all-seeing or all-knowing, but they can at least highlight irregularities in the voting process.

What type of issue would you expect these monitors to prevent or uncover?

Election monitors make sense in third-world countries, where elections are administrated by corrupt government officials and literal ballot-box-stuffing is a possibility. But in the US, civilian volunteers with known party affiliations administer elections, and many states cast ballots electronically.

If you’re really concerned about the integrity of our elections at a ballot-box level, the best thing you could do would be to volunteer to administer elections in your local precinct.

It's an extra check on the whole system with a known cost. People could voluntarily go on exchange trips to other countries when they have their elections. If foreign election monitors state that some places didn't have enough ballot boxes, then it will be more difficult to ignore that sort of problem as business as usual.

> These attacks are acts of war

They're no different than what lobbyists do. Just that the beneficiary is another country instead of a corporation. The oval office (and Congress) are for sale. They have been this whole time. Hillary Clinton amassed $1.4 bn in campaign funds. That kind of money doesn't come from everyday working class people.

As an American citizen, I see nothing worse about Russia buying a candidate than any corporate lobby. Either way my vote doesn't matter, my voice doesn't count, and the only thing politicians will do in our name is throw us a bone now and then with "win-win" legislation like banning robocalls. Anything else immediately becomes a "partisan issue" subject to whatever lobby paid them the most to do (and will cost them reelection if they vote otherwise). Meanwhile my health insurance is still going up 10% per year, a college degree means a lifetime of indentured servitude, and corporations are getting away with whatever they want. Please, any country: hack us. I don't fucking care.

If you have a health plan that only goes up 10% a year, please let me know where to find it.

Careful now, on HN we're not supposed to recognize the First Amendment. Free speech is not meant for us subjects.

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