Friday, December 7, 2018

Election Security

The WaPo editorial board dishes us complete and utter nonsense in "The NRCC hack shows that election security is a bipartisan problem".

The big problem is the misframing of the issue.

The first sentence "PRESIDENT TRUMP may claim that Democratic incompetence was to blame for hacks of the party’s systems during the 2016 election."

Wait, why are we starting the discussion with a claim from the president who lies instinctively about every issue every day? Letting Trump set the framing of the issue is a complete mistake, but understandable if your WaPo antiquated editorial standards require you to take the view from nowhere.  The problem with that approach is that the lead nudges the reader to think about the claim - is it true? is it false? is it misleading? In what way might the claim make sense? But in light of the Russian cyberattacks on Democrats in 2016 that assisted with the installation of an increasingly authoritarian Republican regime, lending credence to the Trump claim by even mentioning it makes absolutely no sense.

WaPo editors, like the NYT editors , are inclined to view the world from a comfortable distance, with a presumed symmetry between two parties - Democrats and Republicans. (Incidentally, what would they do if there happened to be three large parties in the U.S.? Would the moderate party always be the right one and the other two always wrong when they disagreed with the middle path?)

The WaPo claim that "the NRCC hack shows that election security is a bipartisan problem" has its own problems.

What would WaPo have said four or five days ago, before the hack was revealed? It's a bipartisan issue, but we are waiting for a hack of Republicans to have "proof"?

What does WaPo mean by bipartisan problem?  Both "sides" should be able to agree because both "sides" have a strong interest in stopping hacking within the U.S. By now, WaPo editorial board should have learned that there are many issues where both "sides" have aligned interests, but somehow do not agree. WaPo would do better to try harder to understand and explain why it is so, instead of following the constant drumbeat that stems from an insistence on belief in two equal and opposite "sides" - that the world of America is divided into two equal and opposite parties that disagree most of the time, but can agree on compromise, if only they can put aside their differences.

Republicans in government found long ago that it suits their agenda to ignore actual discussion of policy issues and instead focus on winning through better marketing which meant taking down their political opponents with personal attacks that effectively distract attention from policy issues and arguments.

The WaPo editorial continues:
"It is, in fact, an issue for everyone in the United States, demanding a broad response from Congress and political actors across the board. 

Congress has done too little since 2016 to shore up election cybersecurity. Actions to increase the integrity of voting systems are regrettably stalled. Voting machines are not the only critical infrastructure under threat: There is no minimum federal standard for the cybersecurity of campaigns or parties, and there is no single dedicated agency responsible for overseeing how those organizations protect their information — or don’t. There’s a money problem, too: Without federal help, cash-strapped campaigns and state election systems lack the resources to guard themselves."

Congress has failed to act because Congress has been controlled by Republicans who benefited in 2016 from the Russian conspiracy of cyber attacks on the U.S. Setting that crucial fact aside ignores the larger problem that some Republican officeholders have purposely looked to the side while other Republicans actively participated in the attacks on the U.S. electoral system. Ignoring this stark fact with an appeal to "bipartisanship" in this editorial is complete nonsense.

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