Via NBC News, a story of interest to anyone who wants real elections in America:
The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.
Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.
Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.
The officials say systems in the seven states were compromised in a variety of ways, with some breaches more serious than others, from entry into state websites to penetration of actual voter registration databases.
Officials continue to insist that no votes were changed and no voters were taken off the rolls. But if you don't have a verifiable audit trail in your system, and you don't run an in-depth audit (which, as far as I know, no state has done), there's really no way to know if a voter disappears from the voting rolls.
Plus, we now know the number of states breached is much higher -- as many as 33, some experts say. (This article says six of the seven states they contacted insist there was no intrusion.)
It almost seems as though some elected officials don't want to know exactly what happened, especially Republican governors. See no evil, hear no evil, etc.
