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Comment by MaxfordAndSons | Hacker News Reader

This is terrifying. Thankfully I don't think much actual voting infra is network reliant. But it could probably delay the results from being finalized for days, and allow Trump to spew further allegations of rigging.

Though if they targeted electric grid, water, and public transport, starting early in the day and choosing the regions by their populations political leaning, it could easily have an effect on the result itself.

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You don't need to target voting infrastructure. You target media infrastructure (DNS, streaming, web media) in order to either reduce or shift voter turnout. A candidate ahead in a battleground state? You stomp on media reporting to ensure their opponent's voters aren't dissuaded from heading to the polls.

Control the message, and through that the actual votes cast.

I dont even think you need to necessarily shift voter turn out. I think you need to sow enough confusion in order to cast the results into doubt.

Yeah it just needs to be "The internet was broken so your votes were lost" and then some made up post-hoc explanations that 90% of people don't understand so they can't dispute

Given various fuckups over the years, media won't call a state until the polls are completely closed. Silencing them doesn't change this strategy.

This is not congruent with their behavior during the primaries.

I'm working at the polls in CA, and can verify this; all critical information is moved by sneakernet with a two-person rule on its handling.

Of course, I have no information on the security model of the pre-election preparations and post-election tabulation, but luckily results for each polling place are also posted for the public to inspect - media outlets and campaigns can verify the tabulation themselves with a slight delay.

Hahahaha. For sure it's not supposed to be network reliant. But from my experience working on critical infra, even things like power grids and rail systems, this is almost never the case.

That is a terrifying thought. Sounds like the plot of a potential Neal Stephenson novel.

I think you're right, not much of the voting infra is network reliant, but the more I think about it the more it seems that the "fear" factor of such outages could influence the election. Or, perhaps a curated working set of information sources, thanks to selective DDoS. Regardless, terrifying to be sure.

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