Riverside County DA: Hackers Tampered with Voters’ Party Affiliations in 2016

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Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin says hackers accessed voter information during California’s 2016 primary elections and changed the party affiliations of both Republicans and Democrats.

Hestrin opened an investigation into the matter after “twenty formal complaints were filed by voters.”

According to Bay Area public radio station KQED, Hestrin said the hacking led to a back-and-forth between voters of one party and voters of the other. As a result, “heated exchanges between voters, poll workers and poll watchers” boiled over.

“I think that pretty quickly, as is sort of the case around our politics, partisanship got into it,” he told The California Report.

Hestrin said the hackers accessed voter information via California Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s election website. But the site did not retain IP addresses for those accessing information. Therefore the location of the hackers is unknown.

He observed, “I have no idea who they are, or why they did this,” He added, “Not sure who did it, not sure why, just know it was happening across a broad section.”

Hestrin says the investigation is ongoing but there is no real chance for progress because of the lack of IP addresses. According to KQED, Padilla’s office has disputed the basis for Hestrin’s investigation, saying, “As we have previously stated, we do not have any evidence to suggest a breach of our voter registration database, nor have we subsequently received any information or evidence from individuals, counties, or federal officials of any breach.”

Padilla has led nationwide opposition to President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission, refusing to hand over data partly because of his contention that doing so would “legitimize false claims of massive election cheating last fall.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com

 

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