Laura Clawson has a post about the latest news on Russian hacking efforts. Read that, then read Charles P. Pierce and his take on it. He brings up several points worth pondering.
The last outpost of moderate opinion on the subject of the Russian ratfcking during the 2016 presidential election seems to be that, yes, there was mischief done and steps should be taken both to reveal its extent and to prevent it from happening again in the future, but that the ratfcking, thank baby Jesus, did not materially affect the vote totals anywhere in the country. This is a calm, measured, evidence-based judgment. It is also a kind of prayer. If the Russian cyber-assault managed to change the vote totals anywhere, then the 2016 presidential election is wholly illegitimate. That rocks too many comfort zones in too many places.
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And…
The Obama people went to condition red; the Department of Homeland Security tried to declare state election systems to be part of our critical national infrastructure, which they clearly are. The Republicans in Congress shot that down. Curiouser and curiouser, some states declined to cooperate fully with DHS. As the invaluable Marcy Wheeler pointed out on the electric Twitter machine Tuesday morning, one of the recalcitrant states was Georgia, where you can't audit the voting machines, and where they are having a crucial—and extremely expensive—special congressional election next Tuesday.
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Maybe there’s no direct evidence of GOP collusion with Russia — yet — but it’s hard to believe they wouldn’t collude if that’s what it took to stay in power. Their attacks on voting rights and baseless charges of voter fraud have already undermined confidence in our elections; they cleared the way for Russia to further destabilize our country. Read the last paragraph where Pierce sums it up.
We are in deep trouble.
UPDATE: Also, Kevin Drum:
As we all know, last year the Obama administration tried to promote a bipartisan declaration that voting equipment was “national critical infrastructure,” which would have given the FBI and others more authority to investigate and deter Russian hacking. This failed because Mitch McConnell didn’t care about Russian hacking. He cared only that public acknowledgement of Russian hacking might somehow hurt Republicans. Mitch is quite the patriot, no?