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Foreign Interference in American Elections
joshofalltrades
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
This relatively unknown American politician named Donald Trump has recently said some fairly disturbing things about foreign countries interfering in our elections.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2_VABxNXSA
This, to me, signals that Trump believes that he has completely gotten away with his prior invitation for interference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kxG8uJUsWU
Of course, after he was (rightly) called out on this, he walked it back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW7v5Y2Cexw
Obviously somebody has approached the president and informed him that this is actually a crime, and that he should lie about what he would actually do if (when) this happens again.
The chair of the FEC has responded to this.
We keep getting news regarding the president's apparent lack of interest in securing the integrity of our elections (and active intent to subvert said integrity), and we can certainly discuss that here.
Another thing that needs to be discussed is what effect this is going to have on American elections (not just 2020) going forward. Because if nothing happens to the people who boldly, publicly, idiotically call for this interference, it is going to continue to happen, and it will continue to benefit whichever side is doing it and punish the side that is not. Eventually, this is going to be less "will of the people" and more "will of foreign intelligence agencies".
IMPORTANT: this is not a 2020 election thread, nor is it a general Trump dump thread. If it does not specifically relate to election interference, don't post it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2_VABxNXSAThis, to me, signals that Trump believes that he has completely gotten away with his prior invitation for interference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kxG8uJUsWUOf course, after he was (rightly) called out on this, he walked it back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW7v5Y2CexwObviously somebody has approached the president and informed him that this is actually a crime, and that he should lie about what he would actually do if (when) this happens again.
The chair of the FEC has responded to this.
We keep getting news regarding the president's apparent lack of interest in securing the integrity of our elections (and active intent to subvert said integrity), and we can certainly discuss that here.
Another thing that needs to be discussed is what effect this is going to have on American elections (not just 2020) going forward. Because if nothing happens to the people who boldly, publicly, idiotically call for this interference, it is going to continue to happen, and it will continue to benefit whichever side is doing it and punish the side that is not. Eventually, this is going to be less "will of the people" and more "will of foreign intelligence agencies".
IMPORTANT: this is not a 2020 election thread, nor is it a general Trump dump thread. If it does not specifically relate to election interference, don't post it.
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I personally think he's got no chance for 2 terms much less three. But if he tries for three I guarantee we see the largest, bipartisan, country shutting down protest the US has ever seen
Close but no.
I very very much doubt the entire GOP would put that much effort in to getting him elected a third time.
You say that like Obama would have any interest in participating in that.
But more seriously, your hypothetical ignores the larger problem of how the Legislative branch would have had ingrained partisan corruption baked into it by that point, with McConnell ensuring that Democrats need to obtain super-massive leads in votes to obtain even close to parity in seats, and obstructing literally anything a Democratic House or President tries to do.
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I imagine “What the Constitution says” would be pretty irrelevant if they tried to push this.
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At this point I think we have to assume a country is either going to try something shady, or be very obvious in being caught doing something shady. The response to the last round was so weak that it seems inevitable. Either get your guy elected, or cast doubt on US elections and hope to turn that into something. I am hoping I am wrong. Either that or we have serious consequences for past and future politicians who engage in this to send a clear message that it won't end well for everyone involved at the least.
Yes, I think Republicans would change their tune on foreign interference in elections if China generously donated Trump’s tax returns to Buzzfeed.
I've thought about what it would take for their to be adequate consequences to interference in the US elections for a country like russia and the only real options go into incredibly dark territory that would potentially spark a hot war.
Nah, sanction the fuck out of the oligarchs. I think recent history indicates they were feeling it. And make sure there are charges brought against anyone soliciting help.
Also, smash Facebook and Twitter into itty bitty pieces to shut down the fire hose of bullshit. Or at least hang some liability over their heads to make them behave. Preferably spelled with a B.
And of course pass some minimum federal standards for elections and security.
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All we can really do is reform laws and regulations to create actual consequences if you get caught. Make sure anything that seems like it should be illegal actually illegal, create a nonpartisan organization responsible for overseeing administration of these rules, and (it is weird that we even need to worry about this) teach the public that blatant treason is bad even when it helps your political party.
Wouldn’t want to suggest that anyone actually be held accountable though.
1. They're dealing with the same sanctions as the rest of russia and they still pulled off 2016.
2. Not really possible due to first ammendment and even if you were able to get rid of them you'd get some other service taking it's place.
3. This last one I can agree with.
But really, if you want to actually make this not worth the likes of russia's time, you need to engage in some serious black ops espionage designed to drive a wedge between putin and the oligarchs with the intention of either bringing putin down or creating so much internal division and confusion that putin has to put all of his focus on holding onto power and maintaining order in russia.
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"The manipulation of vulnerable and uneducated citizens and the resulting impact on electoral results" is more accurate.
Let's not pretend that there is some sophisticated attack happening but rather there is no emphasis or priority on vetting information within the populace.
If you're not convinced I'm sure you believe that if only we had some active defense against china or russia we'd be just fine because the problem is the content and not a vulnerable / ignorant populace.
I would like to understand what fucking drugs you're on to allow you to believe that's the reality.
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Sanctions certainly aren't going to get the job done. Especially since having your guy win the election makes applying those sanctions rather unlikely. It's not like we've really brought the hammer down on Russia due to their actions in 2016. Which is something that has me extra special worried about 2020, since Russia now has an extra-special vested interest in not ending up having to deal with a Democratic President who might very well be looking to inflict a lot of payback for 2016.
We do need some major reforms. One, we need some stuff on the books to crucify fuckers like Trump, when they opt to be a shitty stooge. Reduce the market of willing stooges for the likes of Russia. Followed by some setups so that if fucking foreign actors successfully get a stooge in, that stooge won't be able to immidiately roll back or ignore the laws put in place to prevent their shit. Not going to do much good for a foreign oligarch to chance crippling sanctions whent they get caught, if the process is such that their stooge can't stop those sanctions in any meaningful way without massive buy in from Congress. A big issue we're dealing with, is that the GOP is able to currently sit back and bemoan possible interferrence without actually having to cast any votes. The moment they have to cast votes showing they are in support of kowtowing to the whims of a foreign power, is the moment this shit loses steam because their base won't settle for the US being some foreign power's lackey.
From your lips...
Of course you still have foreign powers attempting to interfere, but without the blatant personal gain and access peddling you're less likely to get a bad actor as POTUS and can address the attack as an attack without obstruction and defiance from the executive branch.
The FEC was basically intentionally created as a hamstrung agency with no real power. Among the many, many things worth fixing is that.
As for how to handle this kind of thing, start negotiating some international treaties on cyber warfare is the best idea I've heard.
Not saying you are asking for this to happen or anything.
But we should be just as dead set against foreign help for our side as we are for theirs. Among other reasons, we don’t want them to be able to argue that our win was illegitimate.
If Trump honestly wins again, I will be extremely upset. But I don’t want him to lose because we did the thing that we hate him for.
They will anyway, no matter how honest we are.
Using foreign governments as proxies for hacking and spying on internal political opponents is hideous, and I hope that if Democrats ever win again they will make it clearly illegal.
Seems like if Nixon had contracted the Cuban government to do Watergate instead of a band of Cuban ne'er-do-wells, the Republicans would have been a-OK with it.
They were OK with it until like, July 1974.
I mean I hate him for a lot more than this, and that seems to be a thing a bunch of y'all don't seem to understand about it. This is literally like the least offensive of his offenses. Fuck for the most part it's seemingly not even his offense. The russians picked a horse in our race and he was too dumb to coordinate efforts so they just went about waging a propaganda war on their own. There's literally no way to stop that from happening again.
So if a scenario happened like Don Jr had lunch with a Russian oligarch and mentioned verbally, off-the-record, that his father really appreciated what they were doing and a friend from the conservative media would be supplying data that might be helpful, that's not something that an investigation is ever going to find, because it was verbal and informal. (this is a made-up scenario, by the way, just an illustration of what might be possible)
This. When it comes to Russian interference, it actually doesn't matter if Trump knew or was too dumb. Putin is doing this all over the world, most notably in the US and the UK. And he doesn't care - he was backing Trump because he hated Clinton. If the Democrat was someone he was more ok with (i.e. wouldn't have tightened sanctions), he could have cared less if Trump or the Democrat won. It was all about sowing confusion and division and lessen the confidence of the people in their own institutions.
Whether it happens again (it will) and, frankly, if this time it favors the Democrats I don't think there's a ton the Dems can do about it because right now Republicans are running the show and they have thus far shown no interest in stopping foreign influence campaigns against our elections. I don't see the Republicans lifting a finger on this issue unless they start to believe it will cost them elections.
There's a lot we can do to foreign governments that fuck with our elections. We have spies. We have hackers on the government payroll. We can retaliate in ways that are roughly proportionate and that do not spark any kind of armed response. In fact, we're doing that already: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid
Officially we sanction and frown. Unofficially, lets get up to some James Bond shit.