Anything Can Be Hacked
Was the 2024 American presidential election stolen?
“Both Trump fans and Harris supporters baselessly claimed large-scale voter fraud in Tuesday's election.”
BBC News
I’m well aware that I’m about to sound to many people like a conspiracy theorist at best. For I’ve been set up to fail by the dodgy characters at whom I’m pointing a finger. No, not that finger. Well, okay, yes, that finger.
🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼
The chancers, felons, grifters, sociopaths, child hackers, and perverts now in charge of what’s somehow still called the ‘United’ States of America might be dimwits, but they are in possession of a kind of low cunning. The whole ‘Stop the Steal’ boondoggle Trump started – if he wins he wins and the election was run fairly, but if he loses it must have been rigged – of course means no one else can question the legitimacy of an election without coming over as a poor-loser, undemocratic crackpot.
But I’m going to do that anyway. There’s evidence of malfeasance and I’ll be buggered if I’m going to overlook it because of a cheap con trick taken, as ever, from the Malignant Narcissist Mob Boss playbook.
When Trump started whining about stolen elections as early as 2018 or so, I could see exactly what he was playing at. I knew then that if he lost in 2020 – please, please, for the love of dog let him lose – there would be whining and worse. As I tweeted repeatedly, with increasing dread, “He wants to discredit the idea that it’s possible to run a free and fair election, so that if he loses his base (often heavily-armed) will rise up to keep him in power and grift and out of prison. If you guys don’t put a stop to this shit now, it’ll be too late.”
So, yeah, my response to the events of 6 January 2021 were along the lines of:
It was only in the weeks following the appalling – and strangely swift – results of the 2024 US election that I realised I’d missed a trick all along. Mah-gah said it, so we couldn’t. Even though they were lying and could point to no evidence, while we had genuine cause for concern. And if we said it, we’d be accused of ‘ists’ and ‘isms’. Trump had the powerful right-wing and their pocket press on the side of his Big Lie, whereas the craven status quo media wouldn’t countenance even credible claims lest they too be smeared.
“Election denialism emerges on the left after Trump’s win”
NBC News
Fuck.
Ah, fuck it.
The stakes were incredibly high for Trump this time. He was already twice-impeached and convicted multiple times, and known to have had serious financial crises over the past decade or so that holding the presidency helped him handle. A number of people went to jail for things they did for and with him, including his former lawyer Michael Cohen and campaign chair Paul Manafort.
In January this year Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a partially released report that Trump would have been convicted of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election result if he hadn’t been re-elected in 2024. (Of course Trump called Smith “deranged” and said his findings were “fake” because of course).
So we have a high stake and evidence, if further evidence was needed, that Trump doesn’t respect elections. The stakes were also apparently high 😜 for freaky, addled Co-President Elon Musk.
But in the end, everything was squeaky clean, apparently. Nothing to see here. The election was legit. A long series of slow cuts to its integrity and the disenfranchisement of voters didn’t happen. Whether you loathe or hate them, Trump, Musk, Vance, and their Project 2025 and techbroligarch backers are here to stay.
On 6 November, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said “our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free, and fair elections for the American people … we have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.”
And Ishan Mehta, director of media and democracy at public advocacy group Common Cause said the 2024 election was “pretty smooth”, based on monitoring in every state by the group’s volunteers.
No Dem put forward credible claims of fraud or interference, and Kamala Harris conceded without a whimper. Game over.
However
One of the primary claims of election-tampering involves Elon Musk’s Starlink, which was used by some polling locations. The possibility of tampering was roundly debunked by fact-checkers, saying voting machines couldn’t be connected to the internet. But then again. *polite cough*
The political action committee established by Musk, America PAC, declared Trump’s victory in the early hours of 7 November, before any news outlets did.
Feeling vulnerable, hold me
Computer science and engineering professor J Alex Halderman found a software vulnerability in Georgia voting machines in 2020, which meant hackers could change votes. The Secretary of State for Georgia said that was “theoretical and imaginary” and that they’d wait to update their machines after the 2024 election.
A December 2023 open letter from computer scientists, election security experts, and voter advocacy groups described attempts by Trump allies to access voting system software in Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. They said the software was used nationwide and called for a federal investigation. None took place. Another open letter on 13 November 2024 was sent to Kamala Harris urging that hand recounts be undertaken in at least four swing states.
Election Systems & Software (ES&S) controls around half the US election system market. It was founded by Republicans, and its investors are unknown. It donated at least $30,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee from 2013–2020. There were issues reported with its machines in elections in 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. During the latter election things were particularly bad in Pennsylvania but this hasn’t been investigated.
*polite fucking cough*
NBC News – yes, the same people calling me a denialist above. Rude. – reported in 2020 that election security experts found at least 35 voting machines connected to the Internet in 2019. Some were connected for months or even years at a time.
An investigation found the improbable 2020 re-elections of Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell were in states in which votes were tabulated by ES&S. In 2019 McConnell blocked legislation for election security, while his campaign committee was bunged $2,000 or more by ES&S. Republicans, of course, pointed Big Lie fingers at competitor Dominion Voting Systems, which successfully sued some accusers.
Other issues, all involving Republicans and/or their donors:
mail-in ballots
restricting ballot access
amplifying false claims of election fraud
withholding certifications without evidence of voting fraud
training and deploying election deniers as poll workers in eight key states, funded by Trump megadonors
seven new rules established by the Georgia State Election Board found by the courts to be “illegal, unconstitutional and void" shortly before the 2024 election
conservative groups systematically challenging voter registrations across the country. The New York Times said it’s “difficult to know precisely how many voters have been dropped from the rolls as a result of the campaign — and even harder to determine how many were dropped in error”
attacking voting rights groups
Musk using his account on his own platform, X, to post false or misleading information about the 2024 election
‘monitoring’ polling places in Democratic districts
‘monitoring’ ballot drop boxes.
a ballot drop box set alight
election workers faced threats and harassment
harassment of election security researchers
a diarrhoea-like shower of disinformation
stochastic terrorism
Oh, and there’s more. So, so much more. The Wikipedia page titled ‘Republican Party efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election’ is dizzyingly long. And that’s before we properly get into ‘interference by Elon Musk’.
“I'm a technologist, I know a lot about computers. And I’m like, the last thing I would do is trust a computer program, because it’s just too easy to hack.”
Just after election day podcaster Joe Rogan said Musk had “created an app” that would ‘know’ the election results four hours in advance. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton said he was “convinced that whatever rocket science thing [Musk] did made a huge difference in this election”.
In North Carolina and eight other states, Harris got fewer votes than the Democratic candidate for attorney general while Trump got more votes than the Republican candidate for attorney general. There were many other strange ‘split ticket’ results. The Election Truth Alliance said early voting records were similar to a ‘Russian tail’ – a statistical phenomenon indicating potential election fraud.
Then there’s overseas interference, including bomb threats made to polling stations, said to have originated from Russia. Here, fill your boots.
Russia, you say? But Trump hates Russia! He would never … oh, wait.
The Derp State
Was the 2024 US presidential election hacked? We will likely never know. If it was, the people who benefited are now in power and busy sending child hackers into the computer systems of government department after government department. It’s like the techbro version of this, but way less cute:
Lazy legacy media hacks might be right in asserting there’s no conclusive evidence global mob boss Donald Jessica Trump and his weird, childish capos outright stole his election. Yet elections in the US, including that one, have been so comprehensively shit-smeared eight ways from Tuesday, they can hardly be said to have had integrity. All those ‘this is fine’ journos turned two blind eyes to thousands of dodgy dealings before and during that election alone.
But hey ho, it’s not like it matters, right? Right?
Fourth Estate grade: FAIL.
