Who will Californians believe: Secretary of State Alex Padilla or the National Security Agency?
That’s one way to boil down a flap that’s emerged this week over the sanctity of California’s 2016 elections.
Beginning shortly after November’s election, Padilla has pushed back hard at any claims of voting irregularities in the nation’s largest state. The former Democratic state senator representing part of Los Angeles – elected in 2014 to be the state’s chief elections officer – was most irked with President-elect Donald Trump’s claims that he would have won the popular vote if not for massive voter fraud in California and other states. On Jan. 25, soon after taking office, Trump repeated his claims and again specifically alleged problems in California.
Padilla called that a “flat-out lie.” He said his office reached out to Trump aides asking them to provide evidence for his claims and never heard back. In a press release issued then, Padilla said Trump’s leveling of harsh allegations without having a case is “frankly dangerous to people’s faith in our democratic system.”
In May, after Trump aides announced the creation of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Padilla again responded with outrage.
“The commission’s mandate is deeply flawed and its motives suspect,” the secretary of state said in a statement. “The only purpose this commission serves is to distract from critical investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. And I fear that it will serve as pretext for the administration’s efforts to roll back the voting rights so many fought so hard to obtain.”
But Padilla has also flatly rejected the idea that Russian operatives or operatives from any nation “hacked” any of the state’s election systems.
Bloomberg News: California election contractor was infiltrated
Yet early Tuesday, citing a classified NSA report obtained and released by The Intercept, Bloomberg News reported that “Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.”
U.S. intelligence agencies investigating a hack targeting Illinois election operations found telltale evidence that enabled them to uncover similar attempts to infiltrate voting systems elsewhere.
“Thirty-seven states reported finding traces of the hackers in various systems, according to one of the people familiar with the probe,” Bloomberg reported. “In two others – Florida and California – those traces were found in systems run by a private contractor managing critical election systems.” In Florida, Bloomberg wrote, another leak had established the contractor was VR Systems.
In response, Padilla’s office issued a statement that suggested the NSA report was based on outdated information.
“There is no evidence of any breach of elections systems in California. VR Systems, which is headquartered in Florida, does not provide services to the secretary of state,” Padilla said. His statement asserted that while VR Systems once provided some election services to Humboldt County, it was not involved in tabulating votes in California in 2016.
Separately, KPCC – the Pasadena-Los Angeles National Public Radio affiliate – reported that it had contacted election officials in the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside and Ventura, and all denied knowledge of having been hacked.
Meanwhile, there’s been little news on what Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity has done to investigate the president’s claims. The order creating the commission contained no timetable for it to issue interim findings or a full report.
As for any California Democrat, I wouldn’t believe anything they said. They are not people of integrity or honor.
As for our elections has any of these incompetents been informed that Voter ID is the proper and safest vote protection? Probably not, they, Democrats, don’t listen very well.
So there you have it. A government we can’t trust, and votes that are questionable because they won’t protect them!
Sounds like California Citizens, at least those with integrity, lose again.
And what stupid Padilla ignores are the countless illegals that voted using the DMV to register (a democratic law). How many of the voting registers have been checked for deceased voters? Padilla, Rendon and Tax deLeon are all of the same miserable ilk!
President Trump may care about election fraud but good luck getting the proof to them.
I sent a package to the Washington DOJ and hand delivered one to the FBI. The package contained 10 weeks of information from observers who watched the entire Canvass (not just election day). There literally were few laws that were not broken.
The DOJ replied that I didn’t give them any proof of a federal crime (which I did…I cited the laws for them). When I called they told me they scanned the information…They probably have a garbage can labeled ‘scan’…since they had the information for less than a day before they sent my rejection letter.
As for the FBI…it’s been weeks and I’ve heard nothing.
Interesting side note:
Pictures of Trump and Sessions are on the wall BUT on their office wall-video they run…they have Obama holding a FBI hat (and looking stoned)
Election Integrity (and the integrity of any laws) is going to go NOWHERE unit they lay off everyone down to the front desk people and start over.
Kay, can we help you follow up with this? What info did you send them? Was it affidavits?
That’s because these are basically state offenses in violation of the respective State election Codes and have to be reported to the proper authorities such as the Sec. of State’s office and the local County Election Board if there is one as well as the Registrar-Recorder’s office.
If there is anyone reading this that can name a government anywhere in the world that has committed more illegal acts than California’s current government please feel free to list said government here.
Alex Padilla is an expert on hacking. After all, he has been a hack for years.
I’m going with the NSA on this. Trump needs to come in here and clean house and put some people in jail.
OMG, if “someone” hacked the voter base, does that mean that fewer illegal aliens voted than were scheduled to vote?
Fraud in Kommieforniastan, say it isn’t so. I worked a polling place, did a fast sort of the ballots, not one did electronic ballot, it was by just an observation pretty evenly split between Trump and that other person. When the final tally for the poll was announced the lying bytch carried by 25%. Now it could have been the mail in’s but….my gut says BS.
There are ways to check the voter rolls with the tax ID #’s (not SS#’s) in order to verify if illegals voted or not. I listened to a gentleman on TV that is working with Trump’s group and he said they can check to see how many illegals voted. Sounded like they were going to check CA
Can you believe it? With all of the vote fraud scandals California has had in recent years. The Democrat party knows their super majority in the legislature is from the illegal alien vote and they have to fight to cover the fraud.