The aftermath of the 2016 presidential election brought a flood of outrage concerning Russia’s hacking into the email accounts of Democratic Party leaders and officials at the Democratic National Committee. However, it was only after Hillary Clinton lost the election when the level of righteous indignation reached a fever pitch. The period between the outset of the Democratic Convention (when the hacked emails were made public) and Election Day brought some heat for those few DNC officials who were caught plotting against Bernie Sanders to secure the nomination of Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, the plot to steal the nomination for Hillary involved a broader cast of characters.
From the outset of the 2016 primary season, the corporate media – particularly CNN – made a point of suppressing any publicity about the Bernie Sanders campaign. Sanders supporters took their protests to social media, using #BernieBlackout and #OccupyCNN to expose the conspiracy of silence. Once the nomination of Hillary became a fait accompli, a victory celebration took place on CNN’s New Day program, for Friday, June 10, 2016. Throughout that morning, Chris Cuomo and the other tools on the program made no secret of their disdain for Bernie Sanders. The spirit seemed to go beyond mere celebration to a feeling of accomplishment, as though they had helped place Hillary on what appeared to be a clear path to the presidency. Surprisingly, Donna Brazile was not on hand for the festivities.
Did Russian Hackers Help Steal the Nomination for Hillary?
Concern about Russia’s hacking of DNC emails to expose the ugly truth about Hillary Clinton’s priorities has focused on the idea that Vladimir Putin was determined to see Donald Trump defeat Hillary. The more important question should have been whether Putin made sure that the defeatable Hillary, rather than Bernie Sanders, was Trump’s opponent. Polls conducted during the primary season indicated that Sanders could have beaten Trump, while Hillary was a vulnerable candidate who faced a serious risk of losing the election. This could have explained why the hacked emails were not released until a few days before the Democratic Convention began. The Russians did not want their efforts to deliver the Democratic nomination to a candidate who could have beaten Putin’s choice for the American presidency.
Although President Obama and others have emphasized that the Russians could not have hacked the actual voting machines, there was another vulnerability which the hackers could have exploited to deliver the nomination for Hillary. After Clinton secured her party’s nomination, some Sanders supporters formed an investigative unit: ElectionJustice.net (originally: ElectionJusticeUSA.org). The group’s final report, Democracy Lost documented how registration tampering removed the names of registered Democratic voters from the voting rolls in those states which required voters to specify their party affiliation in order to vote in primary elections.
Election Justice verified reports of voter registration tampering in more than 20 states. A hacker could have hacked the Sanders campaign database for the names of contributors residing in states requiring party preference designation as part of the voter registration process. The hackers would then invade each state’s voter registration database to change the party affiliations of those voters, making them ineligible to vote on primary day. The investigation by Election Justice revealed that a significant number of would-be Sanders supporters were unable to vote in their state primaries because their registrations had been changed. Did those voters contribute to the Sanders campaign or were they on a Sanders campaign mailing list? A proper investigation into the Russian hacking should cover this area because a similar event could take place in a future election.
Many Republicans have criticized the inquiries into Russia’s hacking of the DNC as an attempt at de-legitimizing the election of Donald Trump. Don’t count on the Democrats to support a broader investigation into voter registration tampering because it could reveal that it was conducted by DNC operatives or Russian hackers. In either case, the illegitimacy of the Clinton nomination could be exposed and the people at CNN might not be too happy about that.