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Your Turn: Are the Midterm Elections Safe From Hacking?

The White House swears the 2018 elections are secure, but Silicon Valley’s not so sure.

Your Turn gives Beast Inside members a chance to weigh in with questions and perspectives about what’s happening in the news for a chance to be published on the homepage. This Your Turn is part of an Elections 2018 package for Beast Inside members only. Join now to enjoy our special midterms coverage, including an exclusive elections poll and more!

Thank you to member Ann Hardee for this question on security at the polls.

What is the safety of our election system for midterms 2018?

We’re screwed. Just kidding, for the most part. A couple weeks ago, charges were brought against a Russian national for trying to meddle in this year’s elections by creating fake accounts to inject dissension (as if there’s not already enough dissension from both political parties!) in this year’s midterms, which is basically the same playbook Russia used against America in 2016.

But there’s been a debate raging at the Capitol and in tech circles over whether the U.S. is truly prepared for the onslaught of foreign intrusion that everyone suspects is going on. Some in the tech community, like Facebook’s former security chief Alex Stamos and others, say America is still woefully unprepared. Still, the White House maintains America is ready for this election.

Congress has allocated more money to help states shore up their election security, though this summer Republicans blocked a last-minute effort to infuse more money into the system. But because elections are run locally, the federal government has no centralized role in administering elections, so all they can technically do is offer assistance to the some 10,000 jurisdictions that actually run U.S. elections. While the Department of Homeland Security claims they’re prepared and are coordinating with any local poll workers who ask for their assistance, others fear a repeat of what happened in 2016.

Because officials still don’t agree on, or even know, what exactly happened in 2016, there doesn’t seem to be a comforting answer to this pressing question. Sigh.

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