These charts are from a new NBC News / SurveyMonkey Poll -- done between January 30th and February 1st of a random national sample of 4,424 adults, with a margin of error of 2 points.
It shows that 79% of the general public believes our election system is vulnerable to hackers. And 68% are not confident that tech companies are doing enough to stop that hacking. That's not good, but worse is that 57% believe that an enemy of this country (Russia) will once again try to influence our coming election.
Those fears are not unwarranted. We have known for a few months now that Russian hackers tried to hack into the voting systems of at least 21 states. Now we learn they were successful in doing that in a few states. We are told that no results were altered and no voter rolls were altered, but can we trust that?
Some think that Russian interference helped to elect Trump in 2016. Others think that the Russians were just trying to sow the seeds of doubt in our electoral system. Neither is something we want, or something that is helpful to the maintenance of our democracy. Interference in our election by the Russians (or any other foreign country) is something that must be stopped!
What has our government done to stop it? Not much. Congress did pass some sanctions to punish the Russians for their interference, but Trump has refused to impose those sanctions. And neither Trump nor Congress has done anything to insure the sanctity of our voter rolls or voting systems.
Who do we want choosing our leaders -- American citizens or Russian hackers. If we don't take action to prevent it, it could well be the latter.
