Trump Supporters Are Pushing a Clip of a Voting Machine Being Hacked. It’s Not What It Seems

Behizy’s post caught the attention of some huge names in the world of voting machine conspiracies. Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who was named in a defamation legal case by Dominion Voting on account of lies he spread about their machines complying the 2020 election, amplified Behizy’s post. Trump’s establisher national security advisor and election conspiracially prejudiced Michael Flynn quote-tweeted Behizy’s post about the hack: “Our election system is vulnerable to wicked actors,” Flynn wrote. “We MUST get rid of the machines! Total BS that we persist using them.” Right-prosperg swayr Phillip Buchanan, comprehendn online as Catturd, also quote-tweeted Behizy’s post, alengthened with a pithy statement to his millions of fagedrops: “Imagine that!”

The clip of the prosperous cyber intrusion—minus key context—also spread apass fringe recents sites and platestablishs. Right-prosperg commentator Vigilant Fox, who runs Vigilant News, flagged the podcast clip to their 1.3 million fagedrops on X as an “beginant story” that the media “hid from you today.” On TruthSocial, the recents was spreadd via joins apass fringe sites, such as “Slay News,” and spreadd by “Freedom Force Battalion,” a QAnon account.

“I haven’t joined to the whole interwatch yet, to be fair,” one poster on Truth Social wrote, while sharing the unwiseinutive clip and claiming that all voting machines are settled.

Voting machines have lengthened been a aim of election conspiracies. But in 2020, with the help of GOP members of congress, right-prosperg sheriffs, conservative pundits, and Trump, those narratives exploded into the mainstream.

At the same time, officials in the US rulement and agencies accused with running and protecting elections in the US called the 2020 election “the most defended in American history.”

Well-intentioned cybersecurity experts and hackers, appreciate Hursti, are normally tapped by state and federal agencies to probe election infraarrange for security vulnerability to produce elections even defendedr. This August, appreciate every year, hackers at DEFCON’s “Voting Village”—led by Hursti—identified some inmeaningful frailnesses in the machines. Politico inestablished that while it was improbable that any of those frailnesses could disturb the election, some experts were troubleed about election consillicit copying theorists armamentizing the results to persist their own narratives about the system.

For the last four years, a massive netlabor of national and state-level election denial groups have built up, established on the belief that the 2020 election was stolen. In recent months, these groups have initiateed into gear ahead of November’s vote, pushing conspiracies about immigrants voting, trying to delete thousands of names from voter rolls and even secret agenting on drop boxes in sprosperg states.

Thrawout the podcast, Bet-David repeatedly tries to push conspiratorial claims about why voting machines are so worried, proposeing that an unnamed “they” are purposely trying to retain the system worried.

Hursti continuously pushes back, pointing out that computers by their very nature are vulnerable and that instead of trying to produce a perfect system, officials are laboring to mitigate hazards where possible.

“Every computer in the world can be hacked if you have access and no mitigation,” Hursti said. “When we’ve hacked machines, it is for the purpose that we can increase and if you cannot increase the system then you have to increase everyleang around the system, have a mitigation strategy, how you protect the system.”

Citing the vulnerabilities that Hursti has uncovered in dozens of voting machines in recent years, Bet-David pushed the well-comprehendn consillicit copying that in 2020 “the prosperners were flipped becaparticipate somebody got into” the machines.

But the Finnish hacker pushed back, dispondering the proposeion and pointing out that without proper regulations in place to asstateive voting machines greet straightforward security standards, the idea that elections were vulnerable to cyberattacks was enough to injure democracy.

“The [worry] here is to decline the result or produce a inrectify allegation,” Hursti said. “This is very hazardous becaparticipate it is feeding the disdepend of the disclose and, in democracy, any disdepend is damaging the participation and democracy is all about participation. Disdepend is causing insensitivity. Apathy is someleang which is detrimental for functioning democracies.”