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Following is a posting by Laura Jewett, NDI's director for Eurasia, on the
Institute's blog on our website. Laura takes on the false equivalence
between democracy assistance abroad and Russian meddling in U.S. elections.

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Ken


Kenneth Wollack
President
National Democratic Institute
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email: ken@ndi.org
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Why Cyber-Attacks Are Anything But a Taste of Our Own Medicine
<https://www.demworks.org/why-cyber-attacks-are-anything-taste-our-own-medicine>
by LAURA JEWETT <https://www.demworks.org/blogs/laura-jewett> in Washington,
DC
November 7, 2016

*Editor's Note: Scott Hubli, NDI director of governance programs, also
contributed to this post. *

Headlines are warning us about Russian “mischief” in the U.S. elections.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National
Intelligence have said they are confident that the Russian government is
behind hacks into US email accounts and that cyber-probes of some state
election systems may also be traced to Russia. A group of prominent
national security and defense experts has predicted that Russian hackers
will use the stolen emails to build credibility, then leak fake documents
in order to manipulate voters’ opinions and, possibly, choices at the
ballot box.

These cyber-espionage and disinformation campaigns sound like the stuff of
spy novels, except they’re real. What’s going on?

Washington Post editor Jackson Diehl offers a plausible explanation in an
Oct. 16 opinion piece
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/putins-hope-to-ignite-a-eurasia-style-protest-in-the-united-states/2016/10/16/0f271a60-90a4-11e6-9c85-ac42097b8cc0_story.html>:
Putin may be trying to deliver to the American political elite what he sees
as “a dose of its own medicine.”

According to this view, the U.S. elections are fair game for “meddling”
since democracy assistance organizations from around the world have engaged
in elections in other countries, Russia among them.

Make no mistake: Democracy assistance has absolutely nothing in common with
the cyber-hacking and disinformation efforts that top intelligence and
security experts are now warning us about. To compare them is to commit a
dangerous false equivalency. It’s a bit like saying that a doctor who
prescribes a cure and a doctor who administers poison are morally
equivalent because they both attended to the patient.

Consider what elections look like in authoritarian countries. Opposition
political parties are harassed, delegitimized, and frequently barred from
the ballot. Those opposition parties that manage to register find they are
unable to communicate with voters -- their campaign activities are shut
down and they are denied access to the state-run media. The media itself is
muzzled. Citizens are intimidated or bribed into voting as the regime sees
fit. Civil society groups seeking to monitor the process are shut down and
persecuted, and in some cases their leaders are sent to prison. Election
administrators, prosecutors and judges answer directly to the regime. In
short, voters are denied the right to express their free will; results are
predetermined. These are elections in name only. They violate numerous
international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. They bear only the most superficial resemblance to the admittedly
messy, but competitive, fair and fundamentally democratic exercises that
take place here in the U.S.

When democracy assistance is employed in other countries, the objectives
are to promote integrity and to help ensure that the process supports
citizens’ fundamental right to express their political will freely. That
means responding to requests from governments, parliaments, political
parties, civic groups, and election administrators to help promote
transparency, participation and accountability in the elections – first and
foremost so that basic human rights are defended, but also so that everyone
involved can have confidence in the outcome. The purpose of these efforts
is to help give voice to people who would otherwise be excluded from the
process due to a tilted playing field that virtually guarantees the
incumbent regime will win, often with grossly inflated turnout figures and
victory tallies above 90 percent. The providers of this assistance are
governments, intergovernmental organizations and nongovernmental groups.
Democratic leaders welcome this kind of international support because they
understand that credible elections are a pillar of their countries’
stability and sovereignty.

This approach is in stark contrast to foreign interventions that appear
designed to undermine confidence in elections, tip the scales and skew
electoral outcomes, through a combination of misinformation, subterfuge,
and hacks. As the U.S. elections come to a close, it will be important for
all Americans to reject these tactics and the false equivalencies that
attempt to obscure them.

A democracy activist once equated democracy with oxygen: people take it for
granted until they begin to find it lacking, at which point it becomes
exceptionally precious. Perhaps this election cycle, with its unprecedented
threats, will provide a wake-up call to a country that has started taking
its democracy for granted -- a momentary lack of oxygen that may inspire
leaders and citizens to recommit to efforts to strengthen and renew
democratic institutions, both at home and abroad