Florida is facing challenges that just might make surfing the blue wave this fall more difficult than for most states. Fair elections in Florida face a constant barrage of assault by a relentlessly persistent and effective GOP in suppressing voter turnout among Florida’s poor, people of color, and younger voters. Half of the state's counties are even being sued for disenfranchising Hurricane Maria migrants by not providing Spanish ballots (see the story below the fold).
I have always believed that if an election is close, the GOP will find a way to steal it.
In 2016, Paul Ryan (and the GOP caucus) along with Mitch McConnell were fully aware that Donald Trump and his campaign were committing treason by colluding with the Kremlin to steal the US presidential and congressional elections. A political party that is impossible to shame and increasingly despised by the American people, and that controls almost the entirety of power in the United States, is not ever going to stop thinking of ways to hang on to their vice-like grip on this country. FFS, we had GOP senators (no Democrats were invited on this journey) meeting with Kremlin officials on July 4th of this year supposedly telling them lets be friends. Me thinks they were there pleading for Russian interference in the 2018 elections.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson is the most vulnerable senator in the country in the mid-terms. Rick Scott is popular with the state’s voters. Don’t ask me how this is possible, because I don’t know. Perhaps hurricane Irma recovery had something to do with it, even though it was a complete fuck up and he raked the taxpayers over the coals in order to reward his buddies with lucrative contracts for debris removal.
Thanks to the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, we know that the Russians are meddling in the Florida elections. The Naked Politics team at the Miami Herald reports:
Florida election officials said Saturday they are seeking more information to combat any possibility of ongoing hacking efforts on county voting systems, as support mounted over the weekend for Sen. Bill Nelson’s recent claims that Russian operatives have “penetrated” some county voter registration databases in Florida ahead of the 2018 elections.
A U.S. government official familiar with the matter confirmed to McClatchy on Saturday an NBC news report that Nelson was right when he said Russian hackers had “penetrated” some of Florida’s county voting systems. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
snip
Details of the extent of any election security threat from the Russians’ penetration of Florida counties are classified, and the limited information that has leaked presents a confusing picture.
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Paul Lux, the supervisor of elections for Okaloosa County and the president of the state Association of Supervisors of Elections, said county-level election officials have not been informed of concrete steps they should take to inoculate themselves from the specific threat of ongoing Russian hacking attempts that Nelson has alluded to. Florida officials who do have access to classified information regarding the state’s voting systems typically receive briefings from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.