Last week, Orange County supervisor and candidate for DA Todd Spitzer hosted a telephone town hall on the integrity of our elections and OC Registrar of Voters Neal Kelly was a special guest. It focused on voter fraud, the hacking of election systems and all the things Todd was doing about it.
It was a sham.
While the County’s IT department doesn’t have the best reputation, because Supervisor’s who decide vendors for IT services and not technical people are making decisions, Kelly’s staff is one of the best in the nation when it comes to cybersecurity. The staff should be doubled, frankly, but there isn’t an instance of hacking impacting the voter registration rolls or actual elections. Redundant systems kick in for hardware/software malfunctions. Kelly’s work is so well regarded that the hackers who run the annual Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas invited Kelly to speak this year.
If you wanted to ask a question, you hit “0” on the phone and a screener came on to check your question. Several of the questions that made it through were from OC right wingers convinced people are voting illegally. That got through. I wanted to ask Spitzer about the Republican Congress’s decision to block $380 million to combat election cybersecurity efforts. I wanted to see Todd defend that. No such luck…. but the dig whistle questions about illegal voting made it through.
From the story on Truthdig:
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, said Republicans’ refusal to spend more money on election security “represents nothing less than unilateral disarmament” against Russia, citing the U.S. intelligence community’s finding that Russia intervened in the 2016 election and charges brought by the Justice Department against Russian officials for hacking Democratic groups.
Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, depicted the vote on election security grants as a defense of U.S. democracy, citing a comment by National Intelligence Director Dan Coats that warning lights about cyber threats to the U.S. are “blinking red” in a manner similar to those before the 9/11 attacks.
“The flashing red light calls us to action!” Hoyer thundered. “Surely we can rise above pandering to party and Putin to act on behalf of our freedom and our security.” Democrats broke out in chants of “USA! USA!” as Hoyer spoke.
The conference call wasn’t about what OC is dong about the problem of cybersecurity and voter fraud. Kelly said there was no evidence of any voter fraud in this county. It was there to highlight Spitzer for DA. Don’t fall for it. Kelly is the one leading this fight; not Spitzer.