10 new york | august 5–18, 2019
Even more alarming than the implied
weaknesses in the voting system is the
political context in which they exist.
President Trump has frequently either
minimized or outright denied Russia’s
culpability in the 2016 email hacks
(which Trump himself was exploiting at
the time). The benign explanation is that
the president is merely hypersensitive
about the legitimacy of his election. But
this fails to explain why Trump also
refuses to accept intelligence about Rus-
sia’s plans to interfere in the next one.
Earlier this spring, the New York Times
reported that Trump’s chief of staff, Mick
Mulvaney, warned Homeland Security
Director Kirstjen Nielsen not to bring up
Russian plans to interfere with the 2020
election in front of the president. The
story also noted that the administration
eliminated the cybersecurity-coordinator
position. This harrowing article con-
tained one note of official reassurance: a
quote from the well-regarded director of
National Intelligence, Dan Coats, who
insisted, “Election security is and will
continue to be one of our nation’s highest
national-security priorities.”
Now Coats, like Nielsen, has left the
administration. A key source of friction
between Coats and his boss was Russia in
general and its election operations in par-
ticular. The White House weakened the
language in an official statement about
Russian meddling in the midterm elec-
tions. On August 1, when a reporter asked
whether Trump had discussed RobertMueller’s warning about election interfer-
ence on a recent phone call with Vladimir
Putin, the president laughed off the ques-
tion. (“You don’t really believe this. Do
you believe this?”) Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell has dismissed
an election-security bill passed in the
House as “a highly partisan bill from the
same folks who spent two years hyping up
a conspiracy theory about President
Trump and Russia and who continue to
ignore this administration’s progress at
correcting the Obama administration’s
failure on this subject.” Note how tightly
McConnell echoes Trump’s own delirious
messaging. He equates election security
with Trump’s own culpability with Rus-
sia; proceeds to dismiss this as a “con-
spiracy theory,” despite massive evidence
to the contrary; and turns around and
blames the Obama administration for the
operation Trump encouraged.
If McConnell merely objected to dis-
crete elements of the Democratic bill, he
would name them rather than reject the
entire idea as a sore-loser Democrat
excuse for Obama’s failure. A significant
number of Republicans in Washington
agree with Coats and the intelligence
community about the danger of Russian
election interference. There are several
bipartisan election-security bills in the
Senate, and McConnell is blocking every
single one of them. “Even bipartisan
coalitions have begun to crumble in the
face of the majority leader’s blockade,” the
Times reported in June.
McConnell prefers to fade into the
background. But his measures to snuff
out even the tiniest outbreaks of patrio-
tism and conscience within the Republi-
can caucus reveal the true depth of his
commitment. He is the bloodless func-
tionary as active accomplice to a foreign
and domestic assault on the republic.the vulnerabilities of the U.S. vot-
ing system certainly furnish Putin with an
inviting target. The response, or nonre-
sponse, to the Russian threat by both the
administration and the Senate gives us
two important pieces of information
about a prospective Russian attack. The
first is that a hack is more likely to suc-
ceed this time around. The insistent pas-
sivity of both the administration and the
Senate has undermined responses at both
the executive and legislative levels.
Government agencies issue warnings
all the time about disasters that don’t end
up happening. What seems clear is that
Russia has incentive to act and that such
an operation stands at least some chance
of succeeding, given that it can go after“Don’t kid yourself, those numbers in
California and numerous other states,
they’re rigged,” he said to applause. “You got
people voting that shouldn’t be voting. They
vote many times, not just twice, not just
three times. They vote—it’s like a circle.
They come back; they put a new hat on.
They come back; they put a new shirt. And
in many cases, they don’t even do that. You
know what’s going on. It’s a rigged deal.”
In 2020, a crude lunge into dictator-
ship would still be shocking, even given
the president’s violation of political
norms. But there remains a different,
chillingly realistic avenue for a constitu-
tional crisis the next time around. Just
look at the Senate Intelligence Commit-
tee’s report on Russian threats to the elec-
tion apparatus and, even more crucially,
at the Republican Party’s response.
Of all the institutions and norms of
American government, none is more
rickety than the voting process. The sys-
tem’s legitimacy hangs on the public’s
willingness to trust the accuracy of a sys-
tem that is hardly a system at all. There’s
the hodgepodge design: The kind of
machine used to count votes differs not
only among states but within them.
Then there are the hurdles politicians
(mostly, though not all, Republicans)
create in order to make voting inten-
tionally difficult. The existence of the
Electoral College compounds the prob-
lem by increasing the probability that a
small number of ballots will determine
the outcome. (A “close” national election
is one decided by several hundred thou-
sand votes, still orders of magnitude
larger than the several hundred votes
that swung Florida in 2000.)
The Senate report notes that while
Russians did not breach voting machines
in 2016, they scoped out the defenses in
all 50 states. One expert told the com-
mittee that Russia was “conducting the
reconnaissance to do the network map-
ping, to do the topology mapping, so that
you could actually understand the net-
work, establish a presence, so you could
come back later and actually execute an
operation.” The scariest aspect of the
report is not necessarily the facts it
reveals. There aren’t many of them: Dis-
concertingly large blocks of text are
redacted, apparently to keep the liabili-
ties they reveal from those who would
exploit them. The effect of these thick
black bars, interspersed with such terms
as malicious, unexplained, and attacks,
is like watching an aide burst into a
briefing room and whisper something
into the ear of the boss, whose eyes bulge
as he listens.intelligencerWhile Russians
did not breachvoting machinesin 2016, theyscoped out thedefenses in all50 states.TRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC1619INT_COL1_lay [Print]_35555773.indd 10 8/2/19 6:11 PM10 newyork| august5–18, 2019
Even more alarming than the implied
weaknesses in the voting system is the
political context in which they exist.
President Trump has frequently either
minimized or outright denied Russia’s
culpability in the 2016 email hacks
(which Trump himself was exploiting at
the time). The benign explanation is that
the president is merely hypersensitive
about the legitimacy of his election. But
this fails to explain why Trump also
refuses to accept intelligence about Rus-
sia’s plans to interfere in the next one.
Earlierthisspring,theNew YorkTimes
reported that Trump’s chief of staff, Mick
Mulvaney, warned Homeland Security
Director Kirstjen Nielsen not to bring up
Russian plans to interfere with the 2020
election in front of the president. The
story also noted that the administration
eliminated the cybersecurity-coordinator
position. This harrowing article con-
tained one note of official reassurance: a
quote from the well-regarded director of
National Intelligence, Dan Coats, who
insisted, “Election security is and will
continue to be one of our nation’s highest
national-security priorities.”
Now Coats, like Nielsen, has left the
administration. A key source of friction
between Coats and his boss was Russia in
general and its election operations in par-
ticular. The White House weakened the
language in an official statement about
Russian meddling in the midterm elec-
tions. On August 1, when a reporter asked
whether Trump had discussed RobertMueller’s warning about election interfer-
ence on a recent phone call with Vladimir
Putin, the president laughed off the ques-
tion. (“You don’t really believe this. Do
you believe this?”) Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell has dismissed
an election-security bill passed in the
House as “a highly partisan bill from the
same folks who spent two years hyping up
a conspiracy theory about President
Trump and Russia and who continue to
ignore this administration’s progress at
correcting the Obama administration’s
failureonthissubject.” Notehow tightly
McConnell echoes Trump’s own delirious
messaging. He equates election security
with Trump’s own culpability with Rus-
sia; proceeds to dismiss this asa “con-
spiracy theory,” despite massive evidence
to the contrary; and turns around and
blames the Obama administration for the
operation Trump encouraged.
If McConnell merely objected to dis-
crete elements of the Democratic bill, he
would name them rather than reject the
entire idea as a sore-loser Democrat
excuse for Obama’s failure. A significant
number of Republicans in Washington
agree with Coats and the intelligence
community about the danger of Russian
election interference. There areseveral
bipartisan election-security bills in the
Senate, and McConnell is blocking every
single one of them. “Even bipartisan
coalitions have begun to crumble in the
face of the majority leader’s blockade,” the
Times reported in June.
McConnell prefers to fade into the
background. But his measures to snuff
out even the tiniest outbreaks ofpatrio-
tism and conscience within the Republi-
can caucus reveal the true depth of his
commitment. He is the bloodless func-
tionary as active accomplice to aforeign
and domestic assault on the republic.the vulnerabilities of the U.S. vot-
ing system certainly furnish Putinwith an
inviting target. The response, or nonre-
sponse, to the Russian threat by both the
administration and the Senate gives us
two important pieces of information
about a prospective Russian attack. The
first is that a hack is more likely to suc-
ceed this time around. The insistent pas-
sivity of both the administrationand the
Senate has undermined responses at both
the executive and legislative levels.
Government agencies issue warnings
all the time about disasters that don’t end
up happening. What seems clear is that
Russia has incentive to act and that such
an operation stands at least some chance
of succeeding, given that it can go after“Don’t kid yourself, those numbers in
California and numerous other states,
they’re rigged,” he said to applause. “You got
people voting that shouldn’t be voting. They
vote many times, not just twice, not just
three times. They vote—it’s like a circle.
They come back; they put a new hat on.
They come back; they put a new shirt. And
in many cases, they don’t even do that. You
know what’s going on. It’s a rigged deal.”
In 2020, a crude lunge into dictator-
ship would still be shocking, even given
the president’s violation of political
norms.Butthereremainsa different,
chillingly realistic avenue for a constitu-
tional crisis the next time around. Just
look at the Senate Intelligence Commit-
tee’s report on Russian threats to the elec-
tion apparatus and, even more crucially,
at the Republican Party’s response.
Of all the institutions and norms of
American government, none is more
rickety than the voting process. The sys-
tem’s legitimacy hangs on the public’s
willingness to trust the accuracy of a sys-
tem that is hardly a system at all. There’s
the hodgepodge design: The kind of
machine used to count votes differs not
only among states but within them.
Then there are the hurdles politicians
(mostly, though not all, Republicans)
create in order to make voting inten-
tionally difficult. The existence of the
Electoral College compounds the prob-
lem by increasing the probability that a
small number of ballots will determine
the outcome. (A “close” national election
is one decided by several hundred thou-
sand votes, still orders of magnitude
larger than the several hundred votes
that swung Florida in 2000.)
The Senate report notes that while
Russians did not breach voting machines
in 2016, they scoped out the defenses in
all 50 states. One expert told the com-
mittee that Russia was “conducting the
reconnaissance to do the network map-
ping, to do the topology mapping, so that
you could actually understand the net-
work, establish a presence, so you could
come back later and actually executean
operation.” The scariest aspectofthe
report is not necessarily thefacts it
reveals. There aren’t many of them:Dis-
concertingly large blocks oftextare
redacted, apparently to keep theliabili-
ties they reveal from those whowould
exploit them. The effect of thesethick
black bars, interspersed with suchterms
as malicious, unexplained, andattacks,
is like watching an aide burstintoa
briefing room and whisper something
into the ear of the boss, whose eyesbulge
as he listens.
intelligencer
WhileRussiansdid not breachvoting machinesin 2016, theyscoped out thedefenses in all50 states.