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Do not be surprised by the misdeeds of Election Day. This is what experts advise about texting, automated calls or last-minute emails that tell people (falsely) where and when to vote.
SMS have already been traded in Florida, one of many states afflicted by attempts to adjust the vote in the run-up to Tuesday's midterm elections.
Early voting has been fraught with challenges, including an investigation into alleged piracy of voter registration systems in Georgia Sunday and court battles in the state over who should be allowed to appear on electoral lists, and snafus with outdated voting machines in Texas. In Kansas, a federal judge upheld Dodge City's decision to move the only polling station to what a resident called "the middle of nowhere" outside the city.
In North Carolina and Kansas, Republican leaders who wish to retain their majority are subject to stricter rules on voter identification. In North Dakota, where officials need a residential address to vote, thousands of Native Americans are struggling to vote. obtain new tribal or state-issued credentials with civic addresses rather than purchase order boxes, even if their home often lacks numbers and their streets do not carry names.
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and 16 other states saw their voters database go on sale last month on Dark Web, the dark underground internet. These combined databases contain the names, gender, identifiers, addresses, citizenship status and telephone numbers of 81.5 million US citizens.
All US elections face a deplorable level of conduct. But the nation is on the alert, given Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 elections, followed by false allegations of massive presidential election fraud by President Trump, which has pushed some states to pass strict laws on identity and to concentrate the polling stations.
Digital weapons amplify fear.
"People are more sensitive to election security and are more concerned," said John Fortier, director of the democracy project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank that promotes bipartisanship.
Federal authorities have enhanced security cooperation with local and national electoral offices and have even granted temporary security clearances to many election officials across the country to keep them informed in the event of major cyber disruption.
Although the federal position is indeed stronger, it will be of little importance to US voters who are bullied.
Near Charlotte, North Carolina, a black Republican volunteer in a Mecklenberg County polling station said she was confronted with a gun and a series of racial insults on October 24. A 28-year-old man was later arrested for intimidation.
Intimidation broke out in Texas.
"We certainly receive a lot of Dallas County intimidation reports," said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the Texas branch of the non-partisan Common Cause lobby. On one of the offices, he added, "people shout against voters as they try to get closer to the polls."
Election officials sometimes swept the critics when they reached their office.
When the American Civil Liberties Union wrote to Debbie Cox, the county clerk who surrounds Dodge City, in southwestern Kansas, about the move from the only polling station to a site one kilometer away at the 39 outside the city limits, inaccessible by public transport, she has email to an official with the commentary "LOL".
In Okaloosa and Taylor Counties in North Florida, voters have been receiving text messages stating that their ballots by mail have not been received, said Liza McClenaghan, Chair of the Board. of Common Cause Florida administration.
The tactics of fear – and their repudiation – came from both sides.
Facebook ads from the North Dakota Democratic-Non-Partisan League were trying to discourage hunters from voting, saying they would give up their hunting licenses if they did not vote at home when they voted at home. them, assertion that no state official would check.
"It's wrong #ND, do not let these lying democrats get away with it cheaply," tweeted Donald Trump Jr.
But it is in Georgia that the electoral waters were the most agitated. State Secretary Brian Kemp, Republican candidate for governorship, announced on Sunday that he had opened an investigation into the Democratic Party, claiming that his office was "an unsuccessful attempt to hack the system." voter registration, "said the FBI. but did not offer any details about the alleged piracy.
In addition, Kemp was prosecuted last month for its decision to suspend 53,000 applications for voter registration, most of them minorities. In a partial setback for Kemp Friday, a federal judge ruled that 3,141 newly naturalized citizens, belonging to the larger group, should be allowed to vote. Kemp is in a close race with Democrat Stacey Abrams, who hopes to become the country's first black governor.
Kemp suspended registrations under the exact law of Georgia, passed by the Republican-run legislature last year, which orders the authorities to match the name on a voter's identity card potential issued by the government to that on its voter's card. A typo or a missing hyphen may turn an application into a pending status.
Whitney McGinniss was disturbed by a similar problem involving a postal vote – and this shook her confidence in a democratic process she had never doubted before.
McGinniss, 35, a resident of Decatur, East Atlanta, submitted a mail-in ballot. When she went online later and looked at the Secretary of State's website, she noticed that her ballot had been "blamed" for an unmatched signature. This led to a back-and-forth with the Dekalb County election officials.
"You look at them side by side and there are slight differences, but that's my signature anyway," McGinniss said.
"I have a thread with 20 emails. That's not how you're supposed to vote, "McGinniss said. "It's horrible. It's outrageous. … I spent hours at that. This is not an exaggeration. "
Although early voting has been bumpy, it's polling day itself which, according to experts, could create new problems. They urge voters to be wary of any digital communication intended to guide them in their vote – but perhaps mislead them.
"They have to be skeptical, especially if it's a procedural matter – how to vote, where to vote, you know, an example of a ballot," said Steve Grobman, senior vice president of McAfee, a global computer security company Santa Clara, California.
Malicious text messages can send voters to the wrong polls, wasting time and perhaps discouraging them from voting.
Implementing mass automated calls for polling day, supposed to come from polling stations but actually providing misinformation to voters, is "very easy, very simple," said John Dickson, director of Denim Group, a cybersecurity company in San Antonio, Texas.
"It could say," Hey, we call you from the Tarrant County Voter … Your neighborhood is now in a mall. "Something like that, it would be enough to confuse people," said Dickson.
Dickson said foreign pirates could intrude into congressionally specific constituencies, using social media to spread lies about a potential terrorist attack or zapping targeted constituencies with denial attacks. service.
Attackers can target voter registration databases, causing voters to find their missing names when they show up to vote. They could also attack the websites of county election offices, which are surprisingly vulnerable. McAfee found in a survey conducted last month with 1,273 county-level electoral websites in 20 countries that 80% did not use the .gov domain name, which increases security, and 74% did not use the .gov domain name. Encryption tool that is the most basic firewall.
"The number of lanes that a bad actor has … is almost infinite. Identifying exactly the scenario that someone would choose is extremely difficult, "said Grobman.
Electoral constituencies in all but five states now use voting machines that leave a written record in the event of a computer incident. Election monitoring bodies declare that the correct counting of ballots must take precedence over the quick attainment of results.
"We want the results of our elections to be correct and not fast," said Susan Greenhalgh, director of policy at the National Election Defense Coalition.
Even if no major event occurs, Americans should not necessarily feel relieved.
"Do we know that there was no alteration? I did not know we would necessarily know it, "said Grobman.
Tim Johnson, 202 383-6028, @ timjohnson4
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