Russian Interference in the 2020 Elections

I know, I know, some of you will say too early. Some will say Democrats are looking for excuses already. However, we know the Russian Federation interfered in the 2016 election. The report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee is damming in this respect. Part of the executive summary reads as follows:

>Russian activities demand renewed attention to vulnerabilities in U.S. voting infrastructure. In 2016, cybersecurity for electoral infrastructure at the state and local level was sorely lacking; for example, voter registration databases were not as secure as they could have been. Aging voting equipment, particularly voting machines that had no paper record of votes, were vulnerable to exploitation by a committed adversary. Despite the focus on this issue since 2016, some of these vulnerabilities remain.

This highly redacted document should be alarming to any American, no matter what political affiliation it has. Election security is essential to keep faith in the system we live under. We need to trust the results, and we know that since Russia rattled the gates and found them open, they will not be alone in this effort.

One measure we all could push is to go back to paper ballots. Yes, even if counting them would take longer, a paper ballot is impossible to hack. And while the Intelligence Community did say that they have no evidence that the ballots were changed, they cannot assure us that this will not happen in 2020. Paper ballots would go a long way in short-circuiting this.

There are other measures that need taking. They are meant to harden our cyber-infrastructure. To do this, there is a need for funds and legislation. Yet, the Senate Majority Leader keeps blocking this legislation calling it partisan, and proposing nothing to deal with this. He also blocked then-President Barack Obama from raising this issue to the public. Perhaps Obama should have gone ahead, and this is a major point of debate.

There are reasons why McConnell may not want to do secure election, from a political point of view. First, it offers some advantages to Republicans. Why? There is no doubt now that the Russian Federation favored Donald J Trump during the 2016 campaign. Also, the state of Kentucky is getting Russian pork in the form of an aluminum plant via Oleg…