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Why You Should Print Your Polling Information Before Election Day

by Laura Hankin

Regarding Election Day, there's a lot to worry about, ranging from long lines at the polls to the possibility of a tax-evading, misogynistic former reality star being elected president. But there's a new fear to add to the list — cyber attack. And it's exactly why you should print your polling information before Election Day.

Remember that cyber attack that recently took down Twitter, PayPal, and a whole bunch of other commonly used websites, leaving people frustrated and, in some cases, unable to do the things they needed to do for hours? According to Adam D'Angelo, the CEO of Quora, there's a definite chance that the same thing could happen on Election Day. And this time, it could be targeted to deter voters by, for example, knocking out the websites that tell them how to get to their polling places, like Google Maps.

Since Election Day isn't a national holiday, and many people don't get the day off of work, even an information outage lasting only a few hours could keep large swaths of people from voting. And in an election that looks to be unexpectedly close and unpredictable, every vote matters.

So, to be safe, look up your polling precinct information now. Figure out where it is and how to get there. Print it out or take a screenshot, and spread the word for others to do the same.

Hopefully this sort of cyber attack won't happen. After all, it might be hard for a hacking group to effectively only deter the voters for one particular candidate. And as D'Angelo told The Daily Beast, a foreign government or hacking organization probably wouldn't want to "waste" a powerful cyber attack weapon on something that they couldn't guarantee would skew the election for their preferred candidate.

And hey, even if it is attempted, hopefully the United States will easily be able to counteract it. People are clearly on high-alert for any potential Election Day cyber attacks in a way that they weren't on the random weekday when Twitter and Netflix were shut down.

Still, it's better to be safe than sorry. After all, one certain thing about this election is that everyone has a lot of feelings about it, both inside the United States and around the world, and plenty of people and organizations have been trying to influence the results in dubious ways. (I'm looking at you, WikiLeaks.)

Better to take a moment to screenshot now than to wake up on Nov. 9 with regrets as large as Trump Tower.