Since Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote (and even months before that), Democrats have been focused on the fact that 17 intelligence agencies are all in agreement that Russia interfered with our election through propaganda and through hacking of the Democratic National Committee server.
“That can’t be true,” say Republicans. “There’s no evidence that Russia tampered with the voting machines (as if that’s the only form of election manipulation),” say Republicans. Now there is evidence of exactly that. While we don’t yet know that any votes were flipped during the election, the evidence now says that they were hacking voting machines a few months before the election.
According to an NSA document acquired by The Intercept, Russian military intelligence cyber-attacked a U.S. voting software supplier, using information gained in that attack to “launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.”
“Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions,” the document states. The operation gave the hackers “persistent access” to the targeted computers, allowing them to “survey the victims for items of interest.”
Source: Newsweek
This happened in August, so at this time, the NSA says they don’t know if Russians actually interfered at the ballot boxes, but, according to a watchdog group called Verified Voting, Russians very well could have prevented some people from voting.
“If someone has access to a state voter database, they can take malicious action by modifying or removing information,” Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, told The Intercept. “This could affect whether someone has the ability to cast a regular ballot or be required to cast a ‘provisional’ ballot — which would mean it has to be checked for their eligibility before it is included in the vote, and it may mean the voter has to jump through certain hoops such as proving their information to the election official before their eligibility is affirmed.”
Not only are things not looking good for Trump as subpoenas and possible criminal indictments are looming over an increasing number of people close to him, but this brings the legitimacy of the election back into focus. Right now, it’s unclear what will happen if it’s proven that Hillary Clinton would have won the election, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump does not belong there.
Featured image via Adam Berry/Getty Images
