We see glimpses of what may or may not be happening within the states about how voting should be handled in the future.
How many states have paper ballots?
Which states use electronic ballots?
How safe is our voting data bases from external threats and from manipulation via the courts (washing voter rolls)?
How do we prevent outside influences (Koch Bros) influencers from getting sway on how our voter data is protected?
Not sure if this is an overlapping topic, but thought I’d add it to the General Discussion.
“Every state I travel to, state official I talk to, is taking this seriously,” Masterson said before an overflow crowd in the hearing room on the second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Notably, there were plenty of seats left on the Republican side of the bench, with only Charles Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the committee, present. The absence of other Republicans only underscored how divisive the issue of Russian electoral meddling remains; when Dianne Feinstein urged fellow legislators to “put aside politics and act decisively,” she was speaking almost entirely to members of her own party.
After testifying before the committee, Nina Jankowicz, a Kennan Institute scholar who has spent the last several years advising the Ukrainian government on how to counter Russian disinformation campaigns, told Yahoo News that the United States needs a “generational solution” that will make Americans less susceptible to fake news and other forms of manipulation. She pointed to Finland and Sweden as two nations that have done especially impressive work in educating their citizens in this regard. It is work, however, they have been doing since the end of World War II.
For now, Jankowicz hopes that every election board in the nation should make sure that electronic voting records are bolstered by a paper trail of tamper-proof records. She also believes, like Hickey of the Justice Department, that a “credible threat of retaliation” should be presented to the Russians, lest they think of launching another misinformation campaign in November. Lastly, she would “enlist credible third parties,” such as technology companies, to explain to Americans how voting works, since a broad confusion about the electoral process is what makes that process potentially ripe for exploitation.
“It’s mush,” she said. “It’s hard for Americans to wade through that.”