John Sakellariadis flags a scary vulnerability in America’s vote counting systems. As he writes in “Hacking blind spot: States struggle to vet coders of election software” at Politico:

When election officials in New Hampshire decided to replace the state’s aging voter registration database before the 2024 election, they knew that the smallest glitch in Election Day technology could become fodder for conspiracy theorists.

So they turned to one of the best — and only — choices on the market: A small, Connecticut-based IT firm that was just getting into election software.

But last fall, as the new company, WSD Digital, raced to complete the project, New Hampshire officials made an unsettling discovery: The firm had offshored part of the work. That meant unknown coders outside the U.S. had access to the software that would determine which New Hampshirites would be welcome at the polls this November.

The revelation prompted the state to take a precaution that is rare among election officials: It hired a forensic firm to scour the technology for signs that hackers had hidden malware deep inside the coding supply chain.

The probe unearthed some unwelcome surprises: software misconfigured to connect to servers in Russia and the use of open-source code — which is freely available online — overseen by a Russian computer engineer convicted of manslaughter, according to a person familiar with the examination and granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it.

The public has no way of knowing how extensive of a U.S. vote hacking project Putin has in place. We can only surmise that Russia’s hackers are focusing on the swing states, counties and maybe even larger precincts. Nor do we know how good our anti-hacking operation is in these localities and the nation at large.

Like Trump, Putin must realize that his legal status may ultimately depend on the outcome of the U.S. elections. Trump is his lapdog, and it would be folly to deny that Putin will do all that he can to help defeat Democrats. Americans have short political memories. But let’s not forget Trump’s “Russia, if you are listening….” remark, and let’s more safely assume that he has reached out to Putin in some way.  Sakellariadis also writes,

The supply-chain scare in New Hampshire — which has not been reported before — underscores a broader vulnerability in the U.S. election system, POLITICO found during a six-month-long investigation: There is little oversight of the supply chain that produces crucial election software, leaving financially strapped state and county offices to do the best they can with scant resources and expertise.

The technology vendors who build software used on Election Day face razor-thin profit margins in a market that is unforgiving commercially and toxic politically. That provides little room for needed investments in security, POLITICO found. It also leaves states with minimal leverage over underperforming vendors, who provide them with everything from software to check in Americans at their polling stations to voting machines and election night reporting systems.

Many states lack a uniform or rigorous system to verify what goes into software used on Election Day and whether it is secure. When both state and federal officials have tried to bring greater attention to these flaws, they’ve had to contend with critics who resist “federalization” of state election processes.

Further, Sakellariadis reminds readers, “Russian hackers probed election systems in all 50 U.S. states and breached voter registration databases in at least two, according to a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. Four years later, Iranian hackers penetrated inside an unnamed state’s database, then used data stolen during the hack to mount a targeted voter intimidation campaign, the Justice Department found.”

Also, “In the worst-case scenario, hackers could manipulate a state’s voter list, adding fictitious people to the rolls, changing real voters’ information or directing voters to the wrong polling places on Election Day.” Sakellariadis has much more to say about the extent of the problem, and what is, and is not, being done to address it.

Democrats have enough to worry about in just getting out the vote. It would be indeed tragic, not only for Democrats, but for the world, if Dems lost the election as a result of vote theft, instead of a fair count.