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POLITICS
Bloomberg Businessweek
October 8, 2018
44
○ In Georgia, Brian Kemp is running for
governor. He’ll also certify the results
WhoWill Watch the
ElectionWatcher?
When not in use, each of Georgia’s 27,000
ballot-casting machines collapses to the size of a
suitcase. For elections they unfold, storklike, onto
spindly legs, with wings to shield their electronic
screens. There’s a law in their engineering, though.
The digital memory cards that record votes produce
no independent paper trail that can be audited. A
citizen can’t verify that the equipment has accu-
rately recorded her vote.
Computer scientists have been demonstrating
disastrous security issues in these kinds of machines
for more than a decade—and Georgia election
oicials have been aware of the risks since at least
2008. In 2016 it became clear that the threats were
neither imaginary nor theoretical and that Georgia’s
system was among the most exposed and vulner-
able in the country. Meanwhile, the man charged
with overseeing the state’s elections for the past
eight years has scofed at cybersecurity concerns.
That would be Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of
state, who’s running for governor in November and
refuses to step aside, unlike past secretaries of state
who’ve become their party’s nominee for a higher
oice. Ryan Mahoney, a spokesman for the cam-
paign, says no one asked Kemp to resign when he
ran for reelection in 2014. Why should he do so now?
The race, in which Kemp faces Democrat Stacey
Abrams, a former Georgia House minority leader,
epitomizes how the major parties diverge on elec-
tion threats. Kemp has spent years pursuing alleged
voting frauds. But they aren’t Russian. His targets
have included activists who helped elect a major-
ity black school board in a rural area and a group—
headed by Abrams—that led a large minority
registration drive in 2014.
Kemp has remarkably little to show for his
eforts; his critics suggest the real point was intimi-
dation. Now he’s a defendant in a suit accusing him
and other oicials of ignoring the security holes
in Georgia’s system and allowing elections to pro-
ceed, knowing they aren’t safe from hackers. The
plaintifs, a group of voters and a nonproit, sought
an injunction to force the state to use paper ballots
in the midterms. Kemp has demanded the case be
thrown out. Judge Amy Totenberg has expressed
frustration. “I’m concerned that we’re here at this
11th hour,” she said at a hearing in September. “Why
are we just dealing with this now?”
After a last-minute endorsement from Trump,
Kemp came out on top in the Republican primary
for governor in July, which was described by his
main opponent, Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle,
as a battle over who could be craziest. In one ad,
Kemp pointed a shotgun at his teenage daughter’s
suitor while lecturing him about respect. In another,
he vowed to blow up government spending as an
explosion took out a piece of his backyard and
climbed into a giant pickup to say in an exaggerated
drawl, “I got a big truck, just in case I gotta round up
criminal illegals and take ’em home myself.”
A former state senator, Kemp was appointed sec-
retary of state in 2010 when Karen Handel stepped
down to run for governor. Reelected since, he’s
focused on policing who is allowed to vote. The
Georgia chapters of the American Civil Liberties
Union and the NAACP successfully sued him in 2016
What are the other threats to the strong-arm
approach? Countries such as India and China pose
the biggest challenge. Both are major importers of
Iranian oil. While China may be willing to spurn
the U.S., India is more inclined to cooperate. “The
fallout from going alone is serious,” says Wendy
Sherman, the Obama administration’s undersec-
retary of state who led the negotiating team for the
Iran deal. “You take a country like India, which
has an election coming up. They want good rela-
tions with the United States, no question. But they
also don’t need an energy crisis.”
And no matter how successful the Iran Action
Group’s campaign is, there’s no guarantee Iran
will concede. The goal, the State Department says,
is to inlict so much economic pain that Iran is
compelled to come back to the negotiating table
and agree to a deal that not only limits its nuclear
program, but also curbs what the U.S. says is Iran’s
sponsorship of terrorism, its ballistic missile ambi-
tions, and its overall power in the region.
The 12 demands Pompeo has laid out would
amount to a wholesale reshaping of Iran and
reorientation of its priorities. That’s probably
asking too much. Iranian leaders are “very astute
and very savvy, and they are very tough negoti-
ators,” Sherman says. “It’s a resistance culture.”
—Nick Wadhams and Javier Blas
“I’mconcerned
thatwe’rehere
at this11th
hour.Whyare
we justdealing
withthisnow?”
THE BOTTOM LINE The Iran Action Group has exceeded
expectations in its e
forts to win global support for U.S. economic
sanctions on Iran.