Save our elections

Just seven months from now, the New Hampshire primary will be the first test of the integrity of America’s presidential voting apparatus since a 2016 election was successfully penetrated by a foreign power. Prognosis: still scary.

So says a major new study by the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. Unlike the Mueller report, which looked backward to reveal in devastating detail how Russians meddled in 2016, Stanford’s wonks take a clinical look at shortcomings, an urgent todo list of yet-to-be-plugged security holes.

A key concern: A lack of paper-ballot backup in several states and multiple individual precincts across the country — making post-election auditing difficult if not impossible, and increasing the potential for

hacking, or even simple human error.

Meantime, bipartisan bills to strengthen election security continue to languish in Congress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the same Mitch McConnell who refused to join with Democrats to issue a statement warning against Russian meddling in the midst of the 2016 election, is the main reason why.

Oh, and a bit further down Pennsylvania Ave., the president continues to profess publicly his belief in Vladimir Putin’s assertion that the Russian government itself did nothing to help him win election.

That old saying, about those who don’t know history being doomed to repeat it, also goes for those who damn well know exactly what happened but refuse to admit it.