By Mike Huckabee
October 31, 2024
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(Sarcasm alert: Yes, it will be creeping in.)
With all the stories already appearing about vote irregularities --- ballot boxes set on fire, ballots falling off the back of a truck, a local RNC committeewoman arrested at a polling place, lawsuits to keep noncitizens on voter rolls, and much more --- wouldn’t it be helpful to get some reassurance from an expert that the election is secure? And not just any old expert, but the head of a government agency that specifically deals with election infrastructure (voting machines and the like)?
Bret Baier, on Wednesday’s edition of FOX NEWS “Special Report,” brought on a guest to offer this valuable reassurance. And this expert must know all about election security, because she’s the Biden-appointed director of CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration. I feel so much better now after being reassured by her that the election is secure!
(Note: We’ve discussed CISA here a number of times. This is the agency for which the term “infrastructure” was expanded to include internet content, with an eye towards regulating online speech. Mike Benz, founder of Foundation for Freedom Online, has been all over it. If you’re not up to speed, the following is a must-read.)
Anyway, at the start of his segment, Bret acknowledged there are many people who are worried about election security, “and whether someone or some group or some country could interfere with the voting this year.” Then, he introduced CISA Director Jen Easterly.
When asked how she would respond to real concerns from voters about whether or not their votes counted, her answer should raise some big red flags for anyone caring about government and media censorship: “...Americans have been subjected to a firehose of disinformation. A lot of that is coming from our foreign adversaries: Iran, Russia, China. The fact is, our election infrastructure has never been more secure and resilient.”
Really? Never more secure? And there’s that word, “disinformation.” You know, like that Hunter Biden laptop story that was suppressed four years ago. They called that disinformation.
Easterly continued: “But why do I say that? Well, to prevent digital interference, voting machines are not connected to the internet. To prevent digital manipulation, over 97 percent paper ballots. And to guarantee no human manipulation, there are multiple layers of safeguards: physical access controls, cybersecurity controls in place to protect election infrastructure from compromise.”
Again, really? Voting machines aren’t connected to the internet and control both physical and cyber access to the infrastructure? That sounds great! The 2024 election seems to be amazingly secure.
She went on, smiling: “So no matter who you vote for, you should have confidence that your votes will be counted as cast.”
Easterly has been a ray of sunshine on this topic before. On October 2, she told the AP that “malicious actors, even if they tried, could not have an impact at scale such that there would be a material effect on the outcome of the election.” There was no chance at all. I’m so glad to know we can all stop worrying about this.
According to the AP, she said, “State and local officials have made so much progress in securing voting, ballot-counting and other infrastructure that the system is more robust than it has ever been.”
(Note: if you do go to the above AP “news” story, you will see that they manage to work in the editorial comment that Trump’s claims of election rigging are “false.” They have not been proven false.)
“Things will go wrong,” she told them. “There could be another storm. There could be a ransomware attack, a distributed denial of service attack. These disruptions will create effects, but they will not impact the ability and the votes being cast or those votes being counted.”
Wow, apparently they have some kind of magic wand that counts all the votes no matter what! I guess we didn’t have to “bank” our votes ahead of time after all! Kidding; don’t believe this. VOTE NOW.
Here’s another big red flag from the AP story: In late September, Democrat Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to Easterly urging CISA to take further steps against “misinformation and disinformation,” including coordination with social media platforms to deal with “false claims.” Yes, they are still pushing this.
Easterly told the AP that her agency “does not monitor social media sites or attempt to moderate their content.” She said that “CISA does not censor. CISA has never censored. And allegations against CISA are riddled with factual inaccuracies.” Actually, CISA was sued by Republican-led states who alleged the agency had applied “unrelenting pressure” to force changes in content online. The case did not go forward, but that was only because SCOTUS ruled the states didn’t have “standing.”
She had more rock-solid reassurances for Baier, addressing the lack of uniformity of rules in the 50 states by saying, “The diverse and decentralized nature of our election infrastructure actually means that it is impossible for a bad actor to tamper with or to manipulate the voting infrastructure in a way that would have a material impact on the outcome of the Presidential election, certainly not without being detected.”
Don’t you feel better now?
Speaking of the security of voting machines --- and no doubt Bret couldn’t challenge his guest on that, given the settlement between FOX NEWS and Dominion Voting Systems --- Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson alleges there indeed is a glitch in some types of Dominion machines. Specifically, she cites the Dominion ICX Voter Assist Terminal, which she says has a problem if users try to split their ticket (vote for candidates of both parties). This is the machine designed to help people with disabilities.
Wish Bret could’ve asked Jen Easterly about that. More details here…
Also in Michigan, a Chinese student at the University of Michigan voted illegally but, according to state law, will have his vote counted anyway. Once it’s in the system, there’s apparently nothing that can be done.
The student is in trouble, facing charges of perjury and unlawful voting for allegedly signing an affidavit saying he was a U.S. citizen and voting in Ann Arbor. Still, the ballot counts, so some lawful voter in Michigan has been disenfranchised with a canceled-out vote. Here’s more about the case…
Yesterday, we discussed Democrat election attorney Marc Elias and his willingness to “go to the mattresses” if the returns on Election Night are not to his liking. Peter Schweizer has a new piece on this “Master of Political Dark Arts.”
“This guy is presented as the champion, the biggest protector of democracy, to the extent that Donald Trump is seen by so many as the biggest threat to democracy,” Schweizer says. But we find it incredibly ironic that in order to get wins for his clients and “save democracy,” he has to stand democracy on its head. There’s virtually nothing about Kamala’s ascent to the top of the Democrat ticket that is democratic. It’s not about democracy; Elias has said himself on his own website that his goal was to elect as many progressive Democrats as possible.
As reported in BREITBART NEWS, “Marc Elias is behind efforts to kick third-party candidate Cornel West off the ballots in several states, and simultaneously keep the libertarian candidate on the ballots. His law firm files state-level suits to allow unsecured ballot drop boxes, to extend deadlines for absentee ballot counting, and other efforts to increase the likelihood of Democratic victories.”
This Soros-funded attorney had Hillary Clinton as a client and was involved in the creation of the Steele “dossier.” Schweizer says that “Elias’s job is to manipulate the laws and the rules to skew them in a direction that benefits his clients.” He also is a master of picking at results, counting and re-counting until he gets his win. Even if Trump and other Republicans appear to have won in a landslide next Tuesday, Elias will be doing that, treating the initial results like a “red mirage” that he can make vanish in two weeks.
Lots of reports of vote irregularities are coming in, and it’s too soon to be able to verify them. We’d rather apply the “72-hour rule” and be right than to rush out with a story that isn’t accurate. (Of course, even if it’s perfectly accurate, the media will still slam it as “disinformation.”) But last week, Elon Musk established what he calls the Election Integrity Project on X as a way to report suspected irregularities. When we search for this online, what comes up is headline after headline from the likes of THE ATLANTIC, NPR, NBC, the usual propagandists, ripping into Musk for “spreading election security doubts,” promoting “misleading election claims,” and “aggressively sharing conspiracy theories and misinformation.”
You can bet CISA would love to see Elon shut down.
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