Georgia Sec. Of State Blasts "Fake News"; Says Media Biggest Threat To Democracy Not Russian Hackers

Back in December, the Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, publicly blasted the Obama administration and the Department of Homeland Security for repeated attempts to hack into his state"s election system.  Kemp figured the attempts were nothing more than an effort to expose security flaws in state election systems so that Homeland Security could designate all election systems as "Critical Infrastructure" and seize control in a massive "federal power grab."  Here is a recap from our previous post:

Last week we noted a letter from Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, to the Department of Homeland Security questioning why someone with a DHS IP address (216.81.81.80) had attempted to hack into his state"s election database on November 15, 2016 at 8:43AM.  Now, according to WSB-TV in Atlanta, we learn that Georgia"s election systems were actually the target of hacking by DHS on 10 separate occasions. 

The Georgia Secretary of State"s Office now confirms 10 separate cyberattacks on its network were all traced back to U.S. Department of Homeland Security addresses.

In an exclusive interview, a visibly frustrated Secretary of State Brian Kemp confirmed the attacks of different levels on his agency"s network over the last 10 months. He says they all traced back to DHS internet provider addresses.

"We"re being told something that they think they have it figured out, yet nobody"s really showed us how this happened,” Kemp said. "We need to know."

Kemp told Channel 2’s Aaron Diamant his office"s cybersecurity vendor discovered the additional so-called vulnerability scans to his network"s firewall after a massive mid-November cyberattack triggered an internal investigation.

Meanwhile, Kemp pointed out that all of the attempted hackings occurred around critical registration and voting deadlines calling into question whether "somebody was trying to prove a point."

But while the election, and the Obama administration, are now long gone, Kemp"s fight to protect his state"s election infrastructure from being taken over by the feds is still going full steam.  That said, it"s not the Obama administration"s hacking efforts that has Kemp worried these days, it"s "misinformation from the media" which he now says is the biggest threat to Democracy.  Below is an excerpt from an opinion piece that Kemp published in the USA Today:

Misinformation from the media or disgruntled partisans not only fuels conspiracy theorists but also erodes the first safeguard we have in our elections — the public’s trust. Failing to respect this process with accurate reporting is a disservice to the American people.

To be candid, the most plausible and potentially effective attack on our elections is not by hacking the vote — it is through the manipulation of the American media machine. With “breaking news” that generates voter confusion, these baseless attacks and inaccurate stories enhance voter apathy and erode our confidence in the cornerstone of our democracy. That’s the real story.

Kemp goes on to lament about the number of calls he"s now forced to field on a daily basis from "misinformed" reporters that have no interest in learning the facts about his state"s election infrastructure but rather seek to "dilute facts and develop false narratives about Russian hacking and potential vulnerabilities in the system."

For years, we have run our elections with little interest from the press. But during last year’s presidential election, everything changed with the news media’s obsession with Russian meddling.

Now, we are bombarded with questions about election security from reporters on tight deadlines. Their questions often reflect a complete misunderstanding of voting systems and what safeguards are in place to keep them secure.

As reporters chase stories to feed the 24-hour news cycle, they dilute facts and develop false narratives about Russian hacking and potential vulnerabilities in the system. The prevailing plot line is that states like Georgia can’t provide suitable security for elections.

Many news media elite think federal oversight is the answer. Republican and Democratic secretaries of state disagree. A “critical infrastructure” designation is simply a big government power grab.

Of course, while we can"t argue with the logic, we somehow doubt Kemp"s opinion will sway CNN"s wall-to-wall coverage of "Russian hacking."

* * *

Below is Kemp"s full opinion piece from the USA Today:

As Georgia’s secretary of state, I have worked tirelessly to ensure our state’s elections are secure, accessible and fair.

For years, we have run our elections with little interest from the press. But during last year’s presidential election, everything changed with the news media’s obsession with Russian meddling.

Now, we are bombarded with questions about election security from reporters on tight deadlines. Their questions often reflect a complete misunderstanding of voting systems and what safeguards are in place to keep them secure.

As reporters chase stories to feed the 24-hour news cycle, they dilute facts and develop false narratives about Russian hacking and potential vulnerabilities in the system. The prevailing plot line is that states like Georgia can’t provide suitable security for elections.

Many news media elite think federal oversight is the answer. Republican and Democratic secretaries of state disagree. A “critical infrastructure” designation is simply a big government power grab.

Informed, non-partisan experts agree that manipulating a presidential election makes a good TV storyline but lacks real-world standing. State voting systems are diverse, highly scrutinized and not connected to the Internet. Web-based attacks on voter registration do not affect the vote count. The thing that matters most — your vote — is secure.

Misinformation from the media or disgruntled partisans not only fuels conspiracy theorists but also erodes the first safeguard we have in our elections — the public’s trust. Failing to respect this process with accurate reporting is a disservice to the American people.

To be candid, the most plausible and potentially effective attack on our elections is not by hacking the vote — it is through the manipulation of the American media machine. With “breaking news” that generates voter confusion, these baseless attacks and inaccurate stories enhance voter apathy and erode our confidence in the cornerstone of our democracy. That’s the real story.

Are states doing enough to keep our elections secure? Yes.

Anything to the contrary is fake news.

Andrew Cuomo Refuses Federal Data Request Related To Trump's "Voter Fraud Myth"

Shortly after moving into the White House, President Trump promised a "major investigation into VOTER FRAUD" and vowed that any evidence of wrongdoing would be used to strengthen voting procedures.  The following tweets undoubtedly "triggered" millions of liberals across the country as visions of "racist" voter ID laws danced in their heads.

I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

Then, just last month, that "major investigation" came in the form of an Executive Order entitled: "Presidential Executive Order on the Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity."  The Commission was to be chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and it"s mission was defined as follows:

The Commission shall, consistent with applicable law, study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections.  The Commission shall be solely advisory and shall submit a report to the President that identifies the following:

(a)  those laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that enhance the American people"s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes used in Federal elections;

(b)  those laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that undermine the American people"s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes used in Federal elections; and

(c)  those vulnerabilities in voting systems and practices used for Federal elections that could lead to improper voter registrations and improper voting, including fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting.

And, since no one would possibly argue in favor of more voter fraud rather than less, you might assume this particular Executive Order enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support across the country...of course, you could think that, but you would be incredibly wrong.

Enter New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.  Apparently Mr. Cuomo is so certain that voter fraud is nothing more than a right-wing "myth" that"s he unwilling to even comply with a data request to make sure.  We"re sure he"s just trying to save Vice President Pence from wasting his time.

NY refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election. We will not comply with this request.https://t.co/eQC6ORV0v1

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 30, 2017

Of course, Cuomo"s position is somewhat curious in light of the fact that New York City"s own Commissioner of the Board of Elections, Alan Schulkin (Democrat), was caught on a secret video by Project Veritas openly admitting that "there is a lot of voter fraud."  At one point, Schulkin even admits that campaign officials bus minorities from "poll site to poll site" so they can vote multiple times.

“He gave out ID cards, de Blasio. That’s in lieu of a driver’s license, but you can use it for anything.  But they didn’t vet people to see who they really are. Anybody can go in there and say, ‘I am Joe Smith, I want an ID card."

"It’s absurd. There is a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud . . . This is why I get more conservative as I get older.”

“Voters? Yeah, they should ask for your ID. I think there is a lot of voter fraud.  You know, I don’t think it’s too much to ask somebody to show some kind of an ID . . . You go into a building, you have to show them your ID."

“They bus people around to vote . . . They put them in a bus and go poll site to poll site.”  Asked which neighborhoods, Schulkin said, “I don’t want to say.”  When the undercover mentions black and Hispanic neighborhoods, Schulkin responded, “Yeah . . . and Chinese, too.”

Alas, we assume that video is also just a "myth"...

Of course, New York wasn"t the only snowflake state to opt out of Trump"s voter fraud data request. Apparently California is also quite confident that all of their illegal immigrants are voting legally...or something like that.

Secretary Padilla"s response to the Election Commission"s request for personal data of CA voters: pic.twitter.com/UdUt55HSim

— CA SOS Vote (@CASOSvote) June 29, 2017

As The Hill notes, a total of 5 states have refused to turn over any voter data whatsoever while another 9 have said they"ll only hand over publicly available data.

As of Friday afternoon, officials in New York, California, Massachusetts, Kentucky and Virginia had said they would not turn over any of their voter data to the voter fraud commission.

Other officials in Connecticut, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Vermont, Utah, North Carolina, Indiana and Iowa said they would only turn over public information on voter rolls, but wouldn"t share private information.

Wisconsin announced it would turn over public information but would charge the commission $12,500 to buy the voter roll data.

Of course, at the end of the day, you only really need to examine a couple of critical swing states to get a sense for how rampant voter fraud might be.  And, since we don"t see Florida or Ohio on the lists above, we very much look forward to the data from those two states.

Voter Fraud? 5,500 Non-Citizens Discovered On Virginia's Voting Rolls

A law firm working in the public interest has found that election officials in Virginia, a swing state that Hillary Clinton won by a comfortable margin, quietly scrubbed more than 5,500 non-citizens from its voting rolls between 2011 and 2017, according to a report published Wednesday.

But not only did they remain on the voting rolls, 1,852 of these noncitizens cast nearly 7,500 ballots during elections dating back to 1988, according to research by the Public Interest Legal Foundation. The report examined voting records across Virginia’s 133 jurisdictions and found that, unsurprisingly, Fairfax Country, A wealthy DC suburb and liberal bastion, was the worst offender in terms of the number of noncitizens registered to vote and the number of noncitizens who cast ballots, as the tables below reflect.

Elites keep howling that voter fraud in the US is virtually nonexistent, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. According to a report conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2012, the capacity for voter fraud in the U.S. is substantial with nearly 2mm dead people found to be registered voters and nearly 3mm people registered in multiple states.

“Virginia’s voter registration system is so flawed, noncitizens have been found voting since the 1980s and weren’t caught until recently – by happenstance,” Logan Churchwell, PILF’s spokesman, told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s 2017 – using the honor system to determine eligibility is only defended by those without a sense of outrage toward voter fraud.”

Virginia’s lax voting-registration policies have even attracted the attention of the FBI and the left-leaning mainstream media when, back in September, the Washington Post reported that the bureau was investigating how 19 dead people somehow found their way back onto the voting rolls in the crucial swing state.

Last year, the organization released a similar report that found 1,000 noncitizens were removed from the state’s voter rolls, 200 of whom had voted illegally. Since then, the organization has gained access to voting records from all of the state"s voting jurisdictions.

And it’s likely that the state will continue to turn a blind eye to noncitizens who are registered to vote as long as Clinton loyalist Terry McAuliffe remains in the governor’s mansion. Since 2015, McAuliffe has repeatedly vetoed legislation designed to protect the right to vote in the Commonwealth. The former head of the Democratic National Committee has vetoed a staggering eight bills passed by the Virginia legislature that would have strengthened election integrity, according to the PILF report.

At least two of these bills were designed to remedy the issue of non-citizen registration and voting identified in the report.

Voting at the NYC French Consulate

The French Connection Election:

This Saturday afternoon, I walked to the French Consulate on Fifth Ave & 75th Street so as to exercise my Fab Frog voting rights. I was intent on taking a few pictures to mark and record the decidedly important occasion. I asked an attractive female friend to accompany me, as I surmised that it might be a dicey proposition to take photos inside the consulate during the voting procedures, a sexy girl would likely have a better shot at getting away with it than a tick-off tadpole.

As I had feared, moments after she started clicking away, a senior member of the Consule General de France instantly made a beeline toward us and then proceeded to tell us, in no uncertain terms, to immediately cease and desist.  Moreover, he sternly asked us to promptly delete the images off the cell phone.  Of course, I took the phone from my gal pal and pretended to diligently delete them. Little did they know, I was an astute undercover reporter for a highly recognized online publication. (For your viewing pleasure, the adjacent images are what we got away with.)

A Curious Consulate Caper: 

This get’s more interesting.  To remind us and put us all in the appropriate frame of mind, the consulate staff had posted large color posters of all the candidates on the walls of a circular stairwell leading to the large ballroom (turned voting hall) on the floor above. Out of the 11 candidates presenting themselves for the French Presidency, take a wild guess who was missing?  Yep, that’s right, you guessed it, Marine Le Pen was nowhere to be found!

As soon as I noticed the astounding gaffe, I forthwith asked those around me WTF is this?  No one seemed to know or have noticed, but they too were rather miffed. Further, to my astonishment, upon alerting a few volunteers officiating at the proceedings, these dim wits claimed they hadn’t noticed it and didn’t seem to care in the slightest, much less bother addressing the considerable clandestine cockup.

To attempt to rectify the totally FUBAR situation, I went looking for my new pal at The Consule Generale de France so as to directly question him about the grave omission, but conveniently he had disappeared from sight.  I tried to track him down, however, at that point, some other person of authority suggested to me that I best move along so as not to disrupt the steady flow of voter traffic. Shortly thereafter, I was asked to promptly get moving and swiftly escorted out of the building under the watchful eye of the attending security guards.

On a more positive note:  

Prior to entering the voting booth, from an extended table, we were required to pick up two separate cards for two disparate candidates.  Ostensibly, so that no one would see who you were selecting prior to entering the cramped cubicle.  Thus, you voted with the ticket your candidate was on and discarded the other. Well, in my particular booth there were about 50 discarded cards on the small shelf, and I"m pleased to report that very few had Le Pen marked on them!

Sure smells like Globalists to me..............Guess who this furious frog voted for?

What Voter Fraud? - Mexican Citizen Sentenced To 8 Years In Prison After Illegally Voting In Texas

Rosa Ortega, a Mexican citizen, has been convicted of voter fraud and sentenced to 8 years in prison in Texas after inadvertently admitting to election officials that she had been voting in Dallas County for years.  Apparently the voting fraud was discovered by chance after Ortega tried to register to vote in Tarrant County but was rejected after she admitted that she was not actually a citizen of the United States.  While she should have probably just accepted the rejection, Ortega pushed back by arguing that she had already been voting in Dallas County, an argument that drew the attention of investigators.

Ortega"s voting privileges were approved in Dallas after she falsified her application by claiming to be a citizen.  Of course, liberal lawyers, funded by George Soros, have done a masterful job convincing courts around the country that verifying things like a person"s identity and citizenship status prior to allowing them to vote is unconstitutional.  Per CBS:

Prosecutors say the reason officials at the elections department in Dallas didn’t stop the voter fraud from happening is because Rosa Ortega claimed she was a citizen on her application.

Now the Tarrant County D.A.’s office is calling for those claims to be verified before handing out registration cards.

Prosecutors said whether this case prompts elections officials to verify citizenship is an issue for the legislature.

As you may recall, we wrote about a similar incident back in September in which the Cascade Mall shooter, a Turkish citizen, who killed 5 people in the state of Washington was found to have also been illegally voting for years.  And, just like the case above, Washington"s Secretary of State noted that there was no way to prevent the voter fraud because "we don’t have a provision in state law that allows either county elections officials or the Secretary of State"s office to verify someone’s citizenship."

"We don’t have a provision in state law that allows either county elections officials or the Secretary of State"s office to verify someone’s citizenship.  So, we’re in this place where we want to make sure we’re maintaining people’s confidence in the elections and the integrity of the process, but also that we’re giving this individual, like we would any voter, his due process. We’re moving forward, and that investigation is really coming out of the investigation from the shootings."

"The penalties are very serious. That’s why we want to make sure we’re very measured, and this is why we want to make sure we’re very calm and purposeful in how we move forward.  The stakes are very high on both sides. You want to keep the confidence level high, but you also want to protect the voting rights of everyone."

"Our hands are kind of tied, but make no mistake, we want to make sure that everybody has confidence that people casting ballots are eligible. This is certainly going to be a topic at next legislation."

Of course, Ortega"s lawyer tried to argue that a learning disability made it impossible for her to comprehend the complex laws that allow only U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections...Sure, because why wouldn"t Mexican citizens be allowed to vote in the U.S.? 

Her attorney said she has a learning disability and was confused about the difference between being a citizen and a legal resident, so she thought she was allowed to vote.

“The jury didn’t believe that story. They believed that the defendant knew exactly what she was doing, and they responded accordingly,” Prosecutor Jonathan White said.

"Once she gets out of prison and she’s deported, does she bring her four minor children to Mexico? As a mother I think that would be a difficult choice for her,” Birdsall said.

We"re currently awaiting confirmation from Democrats and MSNBC that there is still no concrete evidence of voter fraud and that Trump"s vow to conduct a "major investigation" into the topic is still just a political sham.

I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017