back to article Planes, boats and autocrats: US Treasury Dept. slaps more sanctions on accused Russian troll funder

On Monday, the US Department of the Treasury (DoT) expanded its sanctions against entities associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Russian organization accused of meddling with US elections in 2016 and 2018. The DoT said it had taken action against Russian entities and individuals that allegedly tried to …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So...

    If all the allegations are true and he gets nicked,presumably he will do a plea deal and give evidence against Trump?

    Or the entire thing is pathetic deflection away from how both sides in the election spent vast amounts of money spewing very dubious propaganda, but the Republicans were cleverer about where they spent it. The Democrats got about 3million more votes, the Republicans got the Electoral College. If the Russians planned that, their cunning truly is epic.

    Meanwhile US citizen Rupert Murdoch continues to interfere in British elections without let or hindrance.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: So...

      Good question if is a smoke screen or something else. Trump says no collusion so if there wasn't then why this particular case? The politics in DC are getting even more nasty.

      Sidenote: The founding fathers were wise in setting up the Electoral College. It makes sure that the election is fair and not controlled by a few states (NY, CA, and few others, I'm looking at you).

      I guess the only thing to do is sit back and have some popcorn as the show in DC goes on.

      1. veti Silver badge

        Re: So...

        Why this particular case right now? Obviously, because Trump has just openly confessed to asking the Ukrainian government to meddle in the election, and he wants to dilute that story.

      2. Duncan Macdonald

        Re: So...

        The Electoral College was a way of dealing with unknown population counts and poor communications. At the time of the founding of the USA it was a pragmatic way of dealing with these problems. Now however the Electoral College serves as a way to give the low population states far more political power than their population merits. It effectively gives the Republican party a built in 5 to 10 percent advantage in a presidential election.

        The Republican leadership and the leaders of the low population states will never allow this archaic fudge to be removed because their political power depends on it.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: So...

          The electoral college was also a nasty way to ensure some States with a large non-voting population could control enough the President election without allowing people with the wrong skin colour to vote, just like the three-fifth clause.

          There was already the Senate to ensure States were equally represented.

        2. Draco

          Re: So...

          No, the Electoral College is a way of trying to keep the 3 governing powers separate and independent.

          The US Republican model is based on the UK Parliamentary model which has 3 competing concerns:

          1) The common people: House of Commons (House of Representatives)

          2) Large Landowners: The Senate (Senate)

          3) The Monarch: The President

          In the Parliamentary model, the Senators and Monarch have lifetime representation. The idea of life time occupancy was done away with in the Republican model. The problem is how to ensure that you elect 3 independent and competing concerns.

          1) People vote for the members of the House of Representatives. The distribution of seats tries to reflect the population distribution - so California has the most representatives (53) and South Dakota the fewest (1).

          2) The Senate gives each State an equal representation (2 seats).

          3) The president is elected by the Electoral College. The college electors are neither house representatives, nor senators, and intended to be independent of them. The number of college electors in each state is equal to the numbers of Representatives + Senators - so California gets 55 electors and South Dakota gets 3. How college electors vote varies from state to state, but most states simply vote in the direction of the popular vote of that state.

          In the 2016 election, the electoral votes weren't solely split between Trump and Clinton, some electors voted other candidates for the presidency:

          Donald Trump recieved 304 votes

          Hillary Clinton received 227 votes

          Colin Powell received 3 votes

          Bernie Sanders received 1 vote

          John Kasich received 1 vote

          Ron Paul received 1 vote

          Faith Spotted Eagle received 1

          1. Duncan Macdonald

            Re: So...

            In the 2016 election Trump received 62,984,828 votes (46.1% of the votes cast) and Clinton received 65,853,514 votes (48.2% of the votes cast) but because of the bias to small states in the Electoral College system this became 304 (57%) votes for Trump and 227 (43%) for Clinton in the College.

            As I said - the Republican party knows that it needs the Electoral College system to keep a chance of having the presidency so they would never agree to the system being replaced by a direct vote despite the fact the the original reasons for the Electoral College (unknown populations and poor communications) are no longer present.

            1. Draco

              Re: So...

              The president is NOT supposed to reflect either the popular vote or the state vote - the president is supposed to be independent of both.

              If the President was to reflect the popular vote, then there would be no difference between the House of Representatives and the president - effectively, the President would be the same as the House Speaker.

              It is very tricky to come up with a way that results in Representatives being independent of Senators being independent of the President.

              One solution might be (I am not an American, nor do I, or have I, lived in the US):

              1) House representatives are elected by voters under the age of 65

              2) Senate representatives are elected the way they are now

              3) The president is directly elected by popular vote of voters over 65

              Another solution might be that every election, there is a random draw of 2 States (or maybe 5 or 10). These states are not eligible to vote for House representatives, but instead directly vote for the president.

              But the Electoral College has nothing to do with "uncertainty" about population distribution because electing House representatives requires reasonably accurate knowledge of the population distribution since the number of available seats depends on it.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "The number of college electors in each state is equal to the numbers of Representatives + Senators"

            Exactly, and that was obviously greatly influenced by the three-fifth clause which gave more representatives (and thereby more electors) to states which had a large part of their population actually forbidden to vote, and considered a pure "property".

            Adding senators does little for larger states - which get far less votes than their actual population, while smaller states get a far large representation.

            South Dakota with a 882,235 population gets a vote each 294000 citizens, Wyoming one each 192000, California gets a vote for each 719000 citizens, it's a big difference.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So...

      Electoral propaganda is legitimate - as long as it doesn't come from a foreign power under cover and not even explicit.

      Asking for a foreign interference is an election is not even propaganda, just like acting illegally receiving illegal funds or violating the law to obtain information.

      Or do you believe even Nixon Watergate was a kind of propaganda?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One reason I want to keep old school pen and paper ballots.

    at least they can be reviewed offline.

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: One reason I want to keep old school pen and paper ballots.

      It's not necessary to screw with the votes if you are sufficiently adept at screwing with the voters.

    2. Kabukiwookie

      Re: One reason I want to keep old school pen and paper ballots.

      If the paper ballots don't get destroyed when they're about to be recounted like what happened after Wasserman Schultz 'won' the Florida election.

      Apparently if there are no consequences, some people will happily continue on breaking the law.

  3. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Go

    Oh really ?

    "we will use our authorities against anyone seeking to undermine our processes and subversively influence voters"

    Check the Oval Office. You have a prime suspect right there.

    You can't miss him, he's the only one who is orange.

  4. sanmigueelbeer

    What is the use of "sanctions" anyway? Booooo ... I shaking in my boots.

    It's all just a piece of paper without any tangible enforcement.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      They're useful if you want to pretend you're doing something, to people who don't think about it too much.

      The US Federal Government, acting through the Department of Transportation, appointed a Nominal Scapegoat as part of their ongoing We're Also Mad About the Election Meddling theatrical production. In an official statement Secretary of the Rich Mnuchin said "eh, throw that to the proles".

  5. Claverhouse Silver badge

    “The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.”

    In the interests of Fairness and Equality, the capstones of American Democracy and weak minds everywhere, the American System will next find out all those of her agents who have interfered in foreign elections and politics over the world since 1940, and punish them severely.

    .

    .

    They sent goddamn torture-masters down south to train government interrogators for God's Sake. All the fashionable piffle about the wickedness of Trump or the McCarthyite wallowing over the pitiful ad-buying excesses of wicked Russians, pale into far insignificance compared to electricity applied to the genitals. They are as bad as the Cheka combined with Stasi surveillance.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: “The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.”

      Base calumny. No US intelligence operation has ever come close to the efficiency and effectiveness of the Stasi. You owe the (former East) Germans an apology.

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