The Stanford White Paper on Securing American Elections, published a few weeks, ago is an extremely disappointing presentation, to put it mildly. Summarizing, it focuses almost exclusively on Russian efforts to affect the 2016 election, ignoring other nations and individuals (George Soros). It is riddled with value judgments and naked partisanship. The suggestions for reform seem to have been made without any consultation with actual election officials and precinct workers - a problem with just about every comment or suggestion I have ever read on election reform.
(1) Value Judgments, Moral Equivalence. I almost stopped reading early on when I came to this sentence:
Putin also contends that the United States uses overt military power to violate the sovereignty of other countries, a claim backed by empirical evidence, including most recently, Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), and Libya (2011). (Page 1, emphasis added. I added the emphasis because the phrase makes clear that the authors view Putin’s contention as substantiated by ‘empirical evidence’.)
Seriously? Serbia 1999? That was the United Nations defense of Kosovo after a decade of 'ethnic cleansing' on the Balkan Peninsula, decried by the entire world. Afghanistan 2001? That was a reaction to 9/11, and the refusal of the Taliban to surrender Osama Bin-Laden and other Al-Qaeda responsibles. Libya 2011? That was a international effort, based on a United Nations Security Council resolution passed unanimously (Russia included) to prevent Libyan armed forces from massacring civilian rebels. Even the most controversial of the incursions, Iraq 2003, was undertaken on the basis of United Nations resolutions against a nation that was in cynical violation of a half-dozen United Nations resolutions passed in response to its various unprincipled acts of war and aggression. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a rogue state, a tyrannical regime imposed on a reluctant people. A 'violation of the sovereignty of other countries'? One might say the same about the Second World War.
I have sometimes regretted coining the phrase ‘Demented Left’, and then a passage such as the one quoted reminds me of why I did it. Exactly none of the stated examples were violations of national sovereignty in the real politik sense. Three were United Nations actions, one (Afghanistan) was based on one of the most legitimate casi belli of recent times. Comparisons with Russian interference with neighboring states, unambiguously made in the interest of extending its national influence, and without any sanction of international law or opinion whatsoever, are farcical. Yet in its eagerness to avoid any taint of ‘American exceptionalism’, the authors of the paper engage in exactly that comparison. The blithe acceptance of this sort of false moral equivalence has robbed the American Left of most of its legitimacy in the last decades.
What a White paper written in that spirit had to offer was dubious. But I did go on.
(2) Exclusive Focus on the 2016 Election. Nearly every example, every analog, is drawn from the 2016 election. The emphasis raises an obvious issue - would there have been any concern, would the study even have been written, had Trump not won the election? The authors likely would dismiss this thought with a condescending shrug. But it is their own single focus that causes the question to be posed.
This tunnel vision causes the authors to ignore completely some major problems posed by foreign presence in the United States communication system. One of the most important is the influence of outsiders on local elections. Obviously, the integrity of Presidential elections is extremely important. But the sheer scale of those creates some built-in safeguards. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent, and countless unpaid hours of news and commentary coverage are devoted to the candidates and national issues. Foreign influence, no matter how great, is no more than a trace element in this massive sea of information.
Local elections are something else. Often the local electorate barely knows who the candidates are. Recently, the abrupt dismissal of serious charges of false reporting brought against Jussie Smollett by by Kimberly Fox, the State’s Attorney for Cook County (Chicago) caused an international scandal. Fox’s election to the office was materially assisted by a massive donation by George Soros. Soros, of Hungarian descent, possesses dual American/Hungarian citizenship, but lives abroad, and has no connection at all with the Chicago area. Soros has funded the campaigns of a number of local candidates for chief prosecutor in regions with which he has no affiliation or knowledge, but whose philosophy of criminal law match his views. These extraneous influences can have significantly distorting effects on local policy and issues. This is serious stuff. This White paper is completely silent on the issue.
It is silent, too, on the larger purposes and effects of the Russian trolling. The authors acknowledge that the trolling did not effect the outcome of the election, and also that it occurred when Trump was a significant underdog in the Presidential race. No one in their right mind backs the projected loser in an election. All that happens is that you end up with an enemy in a high place. So what was the point in the Russian trolling?
The answer, as given in the far superior analysis of Professor Kate Starbird, at the University of Washington, and a number of others, is that the Russians were not so much interested in the outcome of the election as in disrupting an inflaming the public dialog of the United States polity. For example, the trolling appears on both sides of the BLM movement, usually the most strident and inflammatory posts. The Russians chose Trump, not because of any particular affection for him or policy consideration, but because he was the most belligerent and controversial of the candidates. After his election, a number of his ‘supporters’ became the most strident and inflammatory of his opponents.
In short, the object here is not victory as such, but the creation of chaos. That makes a considerable difference to how the integrity of elections, because it suggests - bluntly - that the integrity of the election, in terms of vote tabulation, polling, and so on, is not at primary risk. The disruption of candidates’ presentation is secondary - it is actually a subset of a much larger problem, the disruption of political dialog in general. For those like me, a prototypical liberal hawk in the FDR mode, the restoration of civility in our public communication, the end of the ludicrous extremes of partisanship that we have come to, is of supreme importance. You don’t get anywhere when you focus on a short term election result with which you disagree, and ignore the far larger, more disturbing, problems. But that’s what this White Paper does.
(3) Indifference or Ignorance of Actual US Election Practices. This is a little unfair to this paper as the failing is universal, i.e., with no exception that I know of, every discussion of electoral issues ignores the actual reality of American election practice. I have yet to read any critique in which the authors have bothered to interview actual election officials - you know, the county and local volunteers and civil servants who have actual responsibility for conducting elections. The result is that all ignore the actual drop-stream-tributary nature of the way ballots in American elections are actually counted. Also, in the exclusive focus on Presidential elections, most writers have also completely overlooked that Presidential elections are also general and local elections. Even in the most partisan Democratic or Republican areas, where the Presidential and Congressional elections are a foregone conclusion, there are candidates for school board, water board, etc., who care passionately about the outcome of the election, and the fairness of the voting and counting process.
Thus, the fair question is never asked and never answere - just where in the election process is the techno bug suppose to occur? Votes are counted at the precinct level, usually by volunteers from the community. There are poll watchers from both parties. Voting machines are tested at the beginning and end of the polling period. (Do academic critics think ordinary Americans are so dumb that they don’t do this?) The drop-by-drop precinct reports are footed at central counting stations. There may or may not be an audit trail to each individual ballot, but there is (and always has been) a trail to precinct counts, a few hundred at a time. The machines are not networked. Even if they were, the before-and-after operational tests would expose a virus or contaminant.
So - I repeat - just where in this process is the disruption suppose to occur? Please do not reply, ‘corrupt officials’. You run straight into nine centuries of experience with Ockham’s Razor and the rule ofavoidance of multiple explanations when one explanation will do. If you have a corrupt counting process, you don’t need any electronic bug, and it really doesn’t matter whether the ballots are paper or digital.Your problem is corrupt officials.
However, even if it is a universal failing, the Stanford White Paper definitely earns specific damnation for this gem:
A few misconceptions about election cybersecurity also need to be briefly addressed. Many people commonly believe that the security of a computer can be assured by not connecting the computer to the internet. Although many attacks on computer systems are delivered through the internet, the lack of an internet connection does not guarantee security. For example, an individual’s computer could be compromised prior to ownership or while being updated, e.g., through using outdated operating systems with existing vulnerabilities, installing new programs or operating systems with additional files (e.g., backdoors or trojans that share information with a hacker), disabling an anti-virus or anti-malware program, or even monitoring power consumption. (Pgs. 20-21, emphasis added).
You're damn right that it is 'a common belief that the security of a computer can be assured' by not networking it. That's because the belief happens to be accurate. Misconceptions??? It’s the authors suffering from the misconceptions. As amazing as it seems, apparently none of the authors bothered to pick up the phone and talk to an actual election official. What they would have learned is that a polling machine is field-tested, usually on the morning of the election and after the polls close. So what does all this talk of ‘compromise prior to ownership or while being updated’ come to? How do the authors suggest a voting machine is corrupted during the short interval (less than an hour) between test and polls opening? And re-tested at the end of the day?
In the practical reality that the authors have completely ignored, at the end of the day, the workers will total the votes from the machines, and submit the tallies up line to where they are footed and summarized. Are the Stanford authors really so naive, so contemptuous of the ordinary intelligence of precinct workers, that they don’t realize that the tallies are checked at the local level before transmission, i.e., there is no automatic upload. And I have not even mentioned that the vast majority of these ‘existing vulnerabilities’ created during updates to operating systems or in manufacture have to do with hacking opportunities that presuppose connection to the Internet, which brings us back to the prosaic fact that the machines are NOT networked.
I’d suggest the authors try an experiment. (My God! Actual data! Who'd a thunk it?) Set up a machine. Test it before first use, for accuracy. (Recall these are not general use computers but single, limited purpose machines.) Then open a poll in which the machine is used for several hours under the observation of poll watchers, with none of the voters having access to the operating system, or being able to do anything else than choose one button from a selection of buttons. If you can find an opportunity for a hack, then write a paper. But before you do, assuming some ultra fiendish hacker, recall that you can’t do a general hack on the entire system because - again - the machines aren’t networked. Your fiendish interloper is going to have to train a small army of techs to invade precinct after precinct, registering as voters in those places, without of course being detected by law enforcement or having any of the foot soldiers desert to the authorities. Good luck.
(In the interest of completeness, I'd note that 15 years ago computer experts noted that it was possible to hack a Diebold voting machine by substituting a false memory card for the accurate one. Of course, this assumes a corrupt voting official, since ordinary voters do not have access to the system. Back to Ockham's Razor, a principle ignored by all the experts. And none of them bothered to wonder why a citizen volunteer, generally one of a number all present at the same time, would risk a major felony to alter the results of a single precinct. Now back to the need for a small improbable army to have any practical chance to influence the outcome.)
In short, there is no empirical discussion in the Paper, no experimentation of any kind - simply high concept reasoning from unproven and extremely dubious propositions. The authors aren’t doing actual argument . They’re reciting a tautology, which is useless.
I would not go on and on about this, other than this is a STANFORD White Paper, and therefore has a presumption of solid academic work. It isn’t solid at all.
But more than that, it is typical of a mode of thought that is ravaging the liberal community and preventing the formation of the large tent movement that is necessary to deal with the major issue of our time, the wealth divide. It is the assertion that there is Something Seriously Wrong, when in fact there is nothing seriously wrong. Our electronic voting machinery works just fine. Our Presidential election in 2016 was impacted by foreign influences, but not to the extent that it undercut the validity of the election. There is reforming work to be done, but not in crisis mode.
Above all, it you are going to do analysis about problems and possibilities in American institutions, don’t simply regurgitate the high level concerns of your peers. Go to the nuts-and-bolts of actual American practice. Don't ignore the common sense and intelligence of the American people. Talk to them. That’s where everything begins.
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