☆ Election integrity expert: the ability to vote is a “bipartisan issue”
There’s nothing more partisan than a disputed election, however, voting and cybersecurity consultant Harry Haury says that as US citizens, “we all ought to be paying attention to whether our government is working like it’s supposed to, lawfully.” We caught up with him during his recent visit to the Bay Area for an Opportunity Now exclusive Q&A.
Opportunity Now: So, you are an election integrity expert but also have experience doing cybersecurity for the federal government, including the NSA, DoD, and the Sandia and Livermore nuclear labs. Is democracy as important as national security and nuclear secrets?
Harry Haury: The democratic act of voting, the preservation of the integrity of our election system, the ability to vote and select our own representatives, is the most important. Most people don’t realize there’s only one right described in the U.S. Constitution properly. All the others were saved for the Bill of Rights, but they could agree on one, that we’d choose our own representation.
ON: You were also a technical advisor to John Ashcroft in the litigation that became Bush v. Gore. Personally, you lean conservative, and that particular litigation was, by definition, partisan. And it also seems lately that the term “election integrity” is coded right-wing. But in reality, isn’t it a bipartisan issue?
HH: It is a bipartisan issue. And if you look at the years between the Clinton administration and Obama, the people screaming the loudest about the vulnerability of election machines were people like Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden. They knew then that these systems were extremely vulnerable to manipulation.
But then President Trump comes along, and now to talk about election integrity is suddenly a horrible thing. The liberal press will decry the “election deniers.” I don’t know how many times I’ve been called an election denier. What I really am is an election-security and operational-integrity denier. If you look at the systems, they are intrinsically broken.
ON: Isn’t the problem that election integrity is a bipartisan issue but it’s never at the same time. It’s partisan depending on who won. So, if someone’s party wins, everything’s perfect; but if his party loses, everything’s horrible.
HH: As U.S. citizens, we all ought to be paying attention to whether our government is working like it’s supposed to, lawfully.
I’m not a communist, but if the people want to elect a communist to be their representative, there should be nothing wrong with that under the U.S. Constitution, unless they’re guilty of treason or something.
But we have to guarantee that when the people get tired of electing that communist, they have the right to vote him out.
ON: So the most important thing is that the people’s choice is recorded accurately?
HH: Our systems have to make sure that the people who are voting are eligible. Our systems have to make sure that the ballot that’s being submitted is true. They have to count the ballots accurately.
We have to make sure what’s coming into the system is real, and we need to make sure that the counts coming out of the system are real.
It’s very simple. Real votes, real voters, real counts, real proof.
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