Timothy Birdnow

This is ridiculous; the FBI is investigating Mike "My Pillow" Lindell and an organization he founded to help secure the vote because of an e-mail they sent out to poll supervisors asking about their cyber-security and requesting basic information (like their mailing addresses).

They are doing this based on "threats to poll workers" and "white powder" that was allegedly sent out. But who did all that? Almost always it was Leftists and Democrats. There are no documented cases of Trump supporters doing any of these things.

This is just another attempt to silence dissent by the government.

There is nothing illegal in what Lindell's group did, nor is there any compulsion by the group to make anyone respond. It's like getting an "enlarge your penis" pop-up on your computer; you don't click on it unless you are either an idiot or really, really sad about your lilliputian equipment.

FTA:


In the dynamic and toxic threat environment in which the election is occurring, the survey's attempt to harvest details about elections' cybersecurity protections was also eyebrow-raising to election officers.

"That was a red flag for members," Andino said – since revealing how a given county protects its system could also help a potential malicious actor ferret out the vulnerabilities.

Poll workers and election staff around the country have been receiving threats of physical violence and in many locations have had to undergo security training.

"I'm not sure if the questions in that survey crossed the line or not, but either way I'm not excited about information like that getting out to the public," said Joseph Kirk, the election supervisor in Bartow County, Georgia. He had received the ECB survey – it had landed in his spam folder.

"We're a little more protective of our home addresses than we used to be," Kirk said. "And just as far as security, we don't want to give anyone a playbook for what they'd have to defeat to get into our networks."

"If somebody was not thinking and they gave out that information – that's like giving the code to your election's front door," Andino said.

EI-ISAC has received reports from 58 of its members so far, according to CIS. Some reports indicated that multiple people in their department received the email, or they were aware of other offices receiving it. Ohio's Secretary of State, for example, reported that they were tracking 93 emails that had been sent to various county boards of elections, according to CIS.

Lindell told ABC News he's "not involved in the day-to-day" operations of ECB so he didn't know "what was sent out." But in a telephone interview, he said "there was nothing done wrong with that survey," and that the FBI had not reached out to him. Lindell also accused the media of "doing a hit job on the Election Crime Bureau."

"I want to get rid of the electronic voting machines, and you should care about it too. There's nothing wrong with the survey," Lindell said, adding they have "plenty of lawyers that look at everything we do."

Lindell has pushed false and unsubstantiated claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. Espousing those conspiracy theories, which have been widely debunked, has embroiled the MyPillow CEO and others in defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies like Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. Lindell has denied wrongdoing. In February, a federal judge affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against Lindell, siding with a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 election in favor of President Joe Biden.

Lindell referred specific questions to Patrick Colbeck, chief operating officer at Lindell Management.

Colbeck in an email said the distribution list they used to share the survey was "obtained from publicly available data regarding government bodies," and the surveys were sent to "as many [election officials] as possible."

He said there was nothing nefarious about the effort and the goal of requesting personal and membership information was to "inform government officials about CIS organization and its operations" and to cross-reference respondents with prior years' membership lists. ECB's survey, Colbeck said, had "received a high rate of opening."
Mike Lindell speaks at a rally featuring Republican Presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, July 27, 2024, in St Cloud, Minn.Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Like Lindell, Colbeck said ECB had not been contacted by law enforcement about the surveys.

"If they do, much as with any organization committed to the integrity of our elections, we will be happy to share our concerns with the Center for Internet Security as well as other [organizations] which we believe compromise the integrity of our election system," Colbeck said.

Colbeck said the alert about their survey was "obviously intended to frighten government officials away from investigating CIS operations." He suggested the warning about ECB's potentially misleading survey itself was "disinformation," and "the body of the email was clearly branded with the ECB logo."

Even after CIS' September alert, ECB's emails continued. In early October, ECB sent another, obtained by ABC News, which urged any recipient who "is a member of the EI-ISAC or has signed an agreement with the CIS" to click on their "ECB Advisory for more information on the risks inherent with their censorship of important election information and the activities of the [Election Integrity Partnership] as a whole."

Election officials have been thrust into the midst of an overheated public discourse and an unprecedented threat environment both in the real world and online, while safeguarding an election likely to be ligated — even as some still maintain unfounded yet enduring doubts about the legitimacy of the last one. And in the grander scheme, experts say, it's not just one day in November at issue when it comes to warding off potential threats.

Recent bulletins from the Department of Homeland Security's Intelligence and Analysis division have warned of violence that could grow out of anger, extremism and conspiracy theories associated with the general election – describing a toxic brew in which bogus conspiracy theories and public incitements merge with fake imagery and fraudulent information in what's become a heavily armed, highly polarized nation.

"Accusations of fraud by notable figures with incitements to action or circulation of viral images or videos purporting to show fraud could further exacerbate the threat environment," DHS said. The threat environment could particularly escalate in the event of a contested or close election, as well as variations in state election laws or unforeseen events impacting the release of results, or technological or administrative errors impacting vote counting processes.

"We're really concerned about threats going right up until the inauguration, so it won't end on Election Day," Andino said. "It's not going to end when polls close. It may only be getting cranked up then."

The 2024 presidential election marks the first since the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when rioters clashed with Capitol police at a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 results. It will offer the first stress test of new systems and guardrails that Congress put in place to ensure America's long tradition of the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

This year's voting process punctuates months of election officials at every level of government weathering a maelstrom of misinformation and threats of bodily harm — from swatting attempts and bomb threats to suspicious white powder sent to numerous Secretary of States even as the first early ballots were set to be cast.

End

Notice how the article keeps stressing violence; that is coming straight from the Southern Poverty Law Center, who are always trying to claim "right wing terrorism" when in fact there is virtually no such thing and everyone who is remotely honest knows that. And they had to repeat the "baseless charges of fraud" shibboleth they have used to justify harassment of Donald Trump and claim there was an "insurrection" when in no way, shape, or form can the January 6 self-guided capitol tour be considered an insurrection. At most it was a minor riot, one far tamer than all the riots we had witnessed for the previous four years. In other words, the authors of this piece shows they are both liars and partisan hacks.

This is a form of election tampering, and it is a suppression of the free speech rights of Lindell and associates. They are really out to get Mike Lindell.

We have to start doing this ourselves to them. In war and politics the aggressor sets the rules of engagement. They made their beds - we need to make them lie in them.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:07 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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