I’m not too worried about the possibility of an October Surprise or something like that, but rather this: Russian hackers targeted Arizona election system
Normally hackers don’t bother with election systems, but it looks like Putin has released his minions to help his bro Trump in the election. At least that’s my best guess. I can’t see them doing this for any other reason, certainly not to do Hillary any favors.
I can see them doing it for another reason: to hack them for the sake of hacking them. So you make it obvious that you’ve hacked them – and then a democratic republic loses faith in the legitimacy of its elections, and thus its elected officials; plus you look like the strong who do as they please, while the weak suffer what they must.
And you get all of that even if you don’t bother to do anything else.
The odds of the election tipping based on the vote in Arizona seem pretty low to me.
The hacking of an election is a serious threat, no question, although in this case decentralization works for us. Imagine if we had truly federal elections. But suppose the Russians hack enough key sites to tip an election.
Now I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but if the polls say one candidate is going to win, and the results end up with the other candidate, it really should be like football with instant replay: there should be a confirmation of results. Investigate hacking. Investigate if felons or non-citizens improperly voted in large enough numbers. Investigate for voting machine errors or polling places with suspicious results.
And if something like Russian hacking was discovered to have happened, overturn the results. I can’t imagine that we’d elect Donald Trump, discover it was a Russian scam, and then just say, “oh well, election’s over, he’s the President.” Screw that. No one should take office when it can be proven that they won due to illegal voting or illegal hacking.
Agreed, but the problem is more nuanced than that: if there’s evidence of hacking then it doesn’t matter who wins, the whole election is cast into doubt. How would we know that the hacking hadn’t favoured Clinton? The mere fact that hacking has been shown to have happened throws the result into question.
Emphasis on the bold print. This is exactly what Putin is capable of doing and probably what he wants to achieve on some level, and he knows that there is also a significant segment of the electorate that he can manipulate to his advantage, who also want to invalidate the outcome of a race that they expect to lose. Even if they concede and accept the outcome of the race, just sowing doubt in the minds of millions of voters weakens confidence in the system, making it easier for the wrong kinds of activists, domestically and abroad, to exploit it.
This is why I am really curious to know more about the relationship between Manafort and the Russian government. I don’t think we can discount the possibility that he took money to subvert the democratic process and cast doubt on this election. I’m not saying that there’s proof that this happened, but it’s certainly within the realm of the possible.
Exactly.
Even if we could prove that hacking only worked to the advantage of Trump, the hacking itself would be damaging. I seriously doubt that republican activists would accept a reversal of an election on that basis. They would immediately ask “How do we know that red states weren’t turned blue?” “How can we trust any of this?” In fact, just the discovery of the hack in and of itself is potentially a destabilizing event. It would just add more support to the notion that the election is ‘rigged’. There now exists credible evidence that it could indeed be.
And this is why every ballot cast in every state needs to be a paper ballot, so that if there are doubts about the count it can be recounted by a known good method, which can simply be counting the ballots by hand.
A system where you press a button on a touchscreen and a number is incremented in a database can’t possibly be trustworthy. That doesn’t mean it has been hacked or is wrong, it can’t be demonstrated to not be hacked to the voting public. It’s a black box, even if some computer guys certify that it hasn’t been hacked you have to trust those computer guys.
But what if they hack the system in Ohio, Florida, or Pennsylvania?
How does having exit polls, and verifying the tally with paper ballots work? Shouldn’t that make fraud obvious?
Example, if the final etally is 53-46 Trump, but both the paper ballot count and exit polls show the tally was 51-49 Clinton, is that enough proof of hacking?
How many people do you have to exit poll or ballots do you need to count? I thought that you only needed 1,000 or so to get a good representation of the public at large. I read somewhere that according to statistics, having a sample size of 1000 provides a good representation. Is that true?
Nowhere near enough. You’re talking about a difference that’s very likely within the poll’s margin of error.
Do voting machines in the US even use open networks, allowing them to be hacked? The only machines I’ve ever seen print out a paper copy while also retaining all data inside their components. The only way to hack them would be to have physical access.
Just imagine the conversation between Putin and Clinton, “My hackers gave you the election; do as I say or I’ll reveal it to the world.”
Now imagine you’re a server or photographer or similar and overhear that conversation…
As long as it’s not an email server, nobody will care.
I believe they are open to communicate with the SoS’s computers.