So much for talk of rigged voting machines being dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory. Now, even mainstream media outlets are reporting about the vulnerability of electronic voting machines ahead of this year's election. Politico first published the news that the nation's top hackers were able to get into top U.S. voting machines rather easily at this year's annual DEF CON conference in Las Vegas. The gathering brings in hackers to test the vulnerabilities in various systems, and nearly every year they are able to hack into voting systems.
And yet, nothing has been done about it. Experts say fixing these vulnerabilities in voting machines is not a quick or easy job, and would likely take several months or years...meaning it's again too late for the 2024 elections. "This is a big problem, it needs to be addressed, and it should have been addressed after the 2020 election," says Raven Harrison, political analyst and former congressional candidate. "But they chose to indict people (for even suggesting it) instead of trying to get to the heart of the problem."
As Harrison points out, people were dismissed as conspiracy theorists or election deniers for calling attention to possible problems with electronic voting machines in recent elections. "Now, the people telling you it's not that big a deal and we don't need to do anything about it are the same ones who assured the American people that our elections cannot be hacked," she says.
The reason we haven't heard much about this until now is Democrats don't want to fix it, and Republicans have been hesitant to address it for fear of being attacked. "They have ruined people who even tried to suggest this is possible, but we have seen that it is possible," says Harrison. "The saying goes that those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it...but those who don't teach history are intending to repeat it."
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