The 2020 elections, news, and discussions

I was 2nd in line today for the first day of early voting. Suck it.
 
You are standing in line? You sir are a Neanderthal!

Two reasons for this 1. I didn't trust that my ballot was going to be counted thanks to the GOP trying to discount mail-in voting (which proved true for some states it seems) and 2. So I can tell my family at the next bullshit gathering that I got off my ass and did so in person on the first day of early voting to shut them up because for some reason I get lumped into being a useless millennial while my brother and sister who are 2 years older are somehow different.
 
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Ex-FBI agent explains how conservative Campus Reform group is utilizing ‘domestic information warfare’
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/ex...up-is-utilizing-domestic-information-warfare/

https://www.chronicle.com/article/right-wing-trolls-attacked-me-my-administration-buckled

https://www.pewresearch.org/politic...-divisions-in-views-of-national-institutions/


First, what is Campus Reform? It's a right-wing propaganda outlet which purports to champion free speech on college campuses. How do they do this? Well, they target professors whose views they disagree with and try to get them fired.
 


What effect will this have on other states?
 
None, it's a very limited ruling to the PA case.

In other news, this is a thing now.

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So glad that private companies have scraped voter data from public records...
 
No, they are going out in some states where voting records are public. They seem to be targeting swing states, and I'm not in one. It's very possible that it's a foreign effort to disrupt voting.
 
No, they are going out in some states where voting records are public. They seem to be targeting swing states, and I'm not in one. It's very possible that it's a foreign effort to disrupt voting.

I'm not ruling out a false flag operation, though, either, as much as it pains me to say it.
 
To what end? There's more than enough bullshittery from the right that no one needs to make anything up.
 
But there are plenty of examples of the Alt-Right already doing this stuff and worse. This is probably one of the least egregious examples of their tactics. These are the people who were planning to kidnap elected officials and are actively trying to start a civil war - this is an anonymous threat, hardly in the same league as their plan to show up with rifles to polling places or running armed convoys through American cities.
 
But there are plenty of examples of the Alt-Right already doing this stuff and worse. This is probably one of the least egregious examples of their tactics. These are the people who were planning to kidnap elected officials and are actively trying to start a civil war - this is an anonymous threat, hardly in the same league as their plan to show up with rifles to polling places or running armed convoys through American cities.


Here is another example that is directly related.

 
One likely piece of good news is that a "hack" likely never happened, as the people targeted seemed to be in states where party registrations are public record.

Since the article is behind a pay-wall:

U.S. officials on Wednesday night accused Iran of targeting American voters with faked but menacing emails and warned that both Iran and Russia had obtained voter data that could be used to endanger the upcoming election.

The disclosure by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe at a hastily called news conference marked the first time this election cycle that a foreign adversary has been accused of targeting specific voters in a bid to undermine democratic confidence — just four years after Russian online operations marred the 2016 presidential vote.
The claim that Iran was behind the email operation, which became news Tuesday as Democrats in several swing states reported receiving emails demanding that they vote for President Trump, came without specific evidence, and other U.S. officials, speaking privately, stressed that Russia still remained the major threat to the 2020 election.


The emails claimed to be from a pro-Trump group called the Proud Boys, but evidence had mounted that they in fact were the work of another, hidden actor. U.S. officials said that was Iran, a nation that increasingly had clashed with the president in recent years.
Officials, however, also stressed that the integrity of the election was intact. “We are not going to tolerate foreign interference in our elections or any criminal activity that threatens the sanctity of your vote or undermines public confidence in the outcome of the election,” said FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, standing next to Ratcliffe. “When we see indications of foreign interference or federal election crimes, we’re going to aggressively investigate and work with our partners to quickly take appropriate action.”
Ratcliffe said the data “can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos and undermine your confidence in American democracy.”



Ratcliffe accused Iran of using the data to send “spoofed emails designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump.”
But some officials were skeptical of Ratcliffe’s assertion that the Iranians were trying to damage the president. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who receives classified briefings on foreign election threats, told NBC’s Rachel Maddow: “From the briefing, I had the strong impression it was much rather to undermine confidence in elections and not aimed at any particular figure.”
The emails were engineered by someone working at the behest of the Iranian government, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. The operation appeared to exploit a vulnerability in the group’s online network.



The messages advised that the group was “in possession of all your information” and instructed voters to change their party registration and cast their ballots for Trump.
“You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you,” warned the emails, which by Tuesday night were said to have reached voters in as many as four states, three of them hotly contested swing states in the coming presidential election.
U.S. officials said privately that the operation was not terribly sophisticated and was disclosed before it could have any major impact. Cybersecurity researchers said little about the operation revealed a capacity for large-scale deception.

First divulged on Tuesday by local law enforcement and elections officials in Florida and Alaska, the emails prompted an investigation that quickly escalated to federal authorities, according to U.S. officials. And by Wednesday evening, officials laid blame on Iran — the fastest ever public disclosure of such intelligence by the United States.



In 2016, it took months for the Obama administration to publicly point the finger at Moscow for the hacks and leaks of Democratic emails, despite the intelligence community having determined Russian culpability early on.
Ratcliffe confirmed that Iran was also distributing a video “that implies that individuals could cast fraudulent ballots, even from overseas.” The video, which was reviewed by The Washington Post, shows Trump making disparaging comments about mail-in voting, followed by a logo with the name of the Proud Boys. It then documents what was made to appear as a hack of voting data in an effort to produce a fraudulent ballot. The video was also posted on a Twitter account that has since been suspended.

“This video, and any claims about such allegedly fraudulent ballots, are not true,” Ratcliffe said. “These actions are desperate attempts by desperate adversaries.”



Relations between Tehran and Washington have grown far tenser under the Trump administration, which withdrew from the nuclear deal that Iran reached with the United States and other world powers. The United States has applied escalating pressure on Iran through sanctions and other actions, including the targeted killing in January in Iraq of Iran’s most powerful military commander, Qasem Soleimani.
“It is clear that Iran has an interest in this election because of the administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign," said Ariane Tabatabai, Middle East Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. She said it also has a broader objective, similar to that of Russia, “which is to fundamentally undermine trust in democratic institutions and the election because discrediting democracy allows Iran to show to its own domestic population, for which it hasn’t been able to deliver, that their democratic ambitions are not worth pursuing.”

In August, the U.S. intelligence community’s top counterintelligence official, William Evanina, issued an assessment that “Iran seeks to undermine U.S. democratic institutions, President Trump, and to divide the country in advance of the 2020 elections.” Its efforts, he wrote, “probably will focus on online influence, such as spreading disinformation on social media and recirculating anti-U.S. content.”



By suggesting the group had gained access to privileged data, and also possibly penetrated electronic systems to detect how people were voting, the emails and video content attributed to Iran seemed designed to create the appearance of an election breach. Such a move may serve to undermine confidence in the integrity of the democratic process without posing a genuine risk to the election, said cybersecurity experts.
“In recent years, Iranian information operations have continued to push boundaries using bold and innovative approaches. However, this incident marks a fundamental shift in our understanding of Iran’s willingness to interfere in the democratic process,” said John Hultquist, senior director of analysis for Mandiant Threat Intelligence. “While many of their operations have been focused on promoting propaganda in pursuit of Iran’s interests, this incident is clearly aimed at undermining voter confidence.”

Department of Homeland Security officials warned state and local election administrators on a call Wednesday that a foreign government was responsible for the online barrage, according to U.S. officials and state and local authorities who participated in the call. A DHS official also said authorities had detected holes in state and local election websites and instructed those participating to patch their online services.



Metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts.
“It’s clearly organized and very much planned,” said Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group.

The domain enlisted for the misleading operation, officialproudboys.com, was recently dropped by a hosting company that uses Google Cloud services, according to Google Cloud spokesman Ted Ladd. Without a secure host, the domain stood vulnerable to exploitation, cybersecurity experts said. Voters using Comcast, Yahoo and Gmail accounts were affected.
In addition to reports from Florida and Alaska, a voter in Pennsylvania told The Washington Post she had received one such email, though she suspected it may have been linked to her previous registration in Alaska. The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office had not received reports about the messages, a spokesman, Mark Shade, said Wednesday.



Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said her organization had received at least one report that a similar email had reached a voter in Arizona. The Arizona secretary of state’s office was looking into the matter, said a spokeswoman, Sophia Solis.
Clarke said her organization, after putting out a call on social media, had received 104 complaints of emails with the same pattern. One research group, Proofpoint, said its analysis showed one of the batches had nearly 1,500 emails.
Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys and the Florida state director of Latinos for Trump, denied involvement, saying the group operates two sites, and was increasingly migrating away from the domain used in the email campaign.


“Two weeks ago, I believe, we had Google Cloud services drop us from their platform, so then we initiated a url transfer, which is still in process,” he said in an interview. “We kind of just never used it.”
 
 
https://www.businessinsider.com/arm...place-trump-campaign-denied-connected-2020-10


Armed men showed up outside a polling place in Florida and claimed to be with the Trump campaign



Two armed men showed up outside a polling station in Florida on Tuesday and claimed to be a part of the Trump campaign, though the campaign denied any connection with them.

Julie Marcus, the supervisor for elections for Florida's Pinellas County, told local outlet WFLA 8 that the men said they had been hired by the campaign.

Marcus said they were dressed in security uniforms, and set up a tent near an early voting site on 1st Avenue North, St Petersburg.

Thea McDonald, Deputy National Press Secretary for the Trump campaign, told WFLA 8 that the men were not part of Trump's campaign and that they had not got any instructions from them.


ABC Action News reported that the men left due to the rain, but said that they would return on Thursday.

Fox 13 Tampa Bay reported that sheriff's deputies will be stationed at all of the country's early voting sites from Thursday until November 2, the last day of early voting.

ABC Action News also reported that the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office is investigating a report of possible voter intimidation over the incident.

Fox 13 noted that bringing a gun to a polling place is a third-degree felony and that political campaigners have to stay 150 feet away from the entrance.

It reported that the sheriff said the men's presence there did not violate the law because they did not bring firearms into the building.

Trump encouraged people to watch polling sites
Trump told his supporters in his first debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden on September 29 that they should watch polling places "very carefully."

"I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it," he said.

He was accused of encouraging voter intimidation by Nevada's attorney general, who said that anyone who did so "will be prosecuted."
 
President Obama campaigns for Biden in Philadelphia
Oct 21, 2020
 
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