Hacker News Reader

It seems unlikely for the result of the election to change even if one state was hacked, so it's not like anyone's skin is even on the line.

You don't seem to have followed this story. The whole point is that we have a very realistic possibility that Trump's unexpected win was due to manipulation of electronic polling machines. Possibly by Russia.

To be specific, Clinton was projected to win Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If she had, she would have won the election. Instead Trump won all three by around 1% each. Across those states, Trump did about 7% better in precincts that used electronic voting than in ones that didn't. A recount of the ballots cast can tell us whether he really earned those votes, or the machines were manipulated.

This kind of manipulation of electronic voting is well within the abilities of US security experts. It is also within the abilities of countries like Russia. Russia had an obvious preference, and has demonstrated the willingness to use cyber attacks to manipulate elections.

I'm focusing on the fact that there's a real possibility Russia hacked the election. By de-emphasizing the possibility that it might have changed the actual election results, it makes it more likely that this won't be a partisan issue.

Russian hacking of the US electoral system is a far, far greater threat to American democracy than Trump being President.

538 does a better job of debunking this than I ever could:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking...

The articles don't debunk each other, they are in fundamental agreement on observable facts.

Both accept that it is possible for the Russians to hack the election. Both state that it is reasonable that Trump actually won. Both agree that the only way to be sure is to conduct an audit.

They do differ. The medium article digs into depth on the technical details of how doable the hack is. The 538 article digs into depth on the quality of the statistical evidence.

They come to opposite conclusions. The medium article concludes that we should audit because eventually someone will try to manipulate the election. 538 is more concerned with raising public concern about fairness. I am more concerned with actual fairness than perception, so I agree with the medium article.

> The whole point is that we have a very realistic possibility that Trump's unexpected win was due to manipulation of electronic polling machines. Possibly by Russia.

No, we really don't.

For this rather wild speculation to have happened:

* The Russians would have had to know exactly which counties would be swing counties, in at least three different states, two of which nobody imagined Trump even had a chance in, in an election year when the best pollsters and analysts in the United States were caught completely flatfooted by the results all over the country.

* They'd have to be lucky enough to pick swing counties that use electronic voting. For example, in Wisconsin there's a mix of electronic and paper ballots across the state.

* And they'd have to know exactly what the vote counts would be weeks in advance so they could slip in ju-u-u-u-ust enough extra votes to give Trump a razor-thin margin of victory.

Look, I realize the election results were traumatic to lots of people, but if you cling to conspiracy theories to avoid dealing with that you're going to spend a long time in the wilderness. I'd advise you instead to work on persuading more people that your political program is the right one. It'll work better in the long run.

> It seems unlikely for the result of the election to change even if one state was hacked

you just need a little "adjustments" to the elections results in several counties in a few (like about 3 this time) states. Which is easy given at how many places the voting is done using [really unsecure] electronic machines.

>Russia has shown interest in destabilizing the USA's electoral system throughout the year. The only question is just how far they are willing to go.

Seems like you think that there is really such a question :) Well, do you think Russia values integrity of US elections more than integrity of Russia's elections? And do you have any idea about integrity of Russia's elections ? :)

It's not that Russia has moral objections but that there is a risk for them if they are found out. How risk-averse are they?

>there is a risk for them if they are found out. How risk-averse are they?

what is the risk? US hacking Russia's elections in response? :) Sanctions? You may have noticed that hacking each other computers is considered on practice (not in the public speeches :) a fair game, kind of a quiet Cold War these days - everybody does it to everybody else and everybody keeps it quiet, be it failures or successes, for exactly that reason of not wanting to make public the fact of doing it themselves.

Specifically in this case the fallout from US government officially establishing/confirming/proving that Russia hacked the US elections would probably be more devastating to the US government agencies and to overall societal trust into the US democratic institutions than to Russia. So Russia has no downside here really either way. Such logic fits pretty nicely to the opportunistic approach (tightly coupled with absolute absence of any moral objections (bombing hospitals and other civilians in Aleppo as part of advancing the Russian interests in Syria for example)) that has already been demonstrated on many occasions by the current Russian regime.

Even without actual hacking, just by supporting and promulgating the rumors and conspiracy theories about the hacking, Russia already deals [risk-free] a lot of damage here, in particular to the societal trust, - with discussions like this one being probably a sign and/or part of that damage.

Old != mature

And mature or immature, I do not want anyone meddling anywhere at all. If you can do it to somebody then be ready to be on receiving end because you are not on any moral high ground. I could not see how Russia could've gotten hold of voting systems. This is also why I do not like closed source code being used for purposes like these. Is the code even audited? If "Russia" was able to successfully meddle, that only shows how poor USA is at securing its own infrastructure. Please defer from producing another Iraq WMD evidences at any case.

Obviously no one should meddle anywhere at all--I'm the first to condemn American overreach and its role in the repression of millions during the 20th century.

That also gives me the right to call for other countries not to interfere in American electoral processes.

> It seems unlikely for the result of the election to change even if one state was hacked...

If Florida (where Trump's winning margin is less than 130,000 votes, which is less than 1.3% of the votes cast in that state) and its 29 electoral votes were declared for Clinton, that would put the two candidates in a dead heat, with 261 electoral college votes each.

At which point the election moves to the House of Representatives, where the Republican party holds a majority and still will after the 115th Congress is seated.

No that is only the case if you don't count Michigan (which Trump is probably going to win very very slightly).

Counting Michigan, Trump has 306 electoral votes. If you take away the 29 from Florida, he has 277, which is still greater than the 270 needed.

You seem to be missing my point.

If Clinton wins Michigan, then the Florida result (i.e. that single state) affects the outcome of the election.

For the conspiracy minded, there will always be doubts.

Feel free to say, "must be free from doubts by reasonable observers."

I'm so old, I remember when suggesting that the election could be rigged was considered treason. I wonder what happened between now and three weeks ago to make that change.

Well, no, I guess it isn't really that puzzling. Someone lost an election and is upset about it.

First, no, you are not that old, because there's no point in the history of our republic where that's been the case.

Second, none of this has anything to do with the article we're commenting on. Injecting volatile political arguments into unrelated threads is a form of trolling

> First, no, you are not that old, because there's no point in the history of our republic where that's been the case.

Please don't gaslight. The Democrats were saying it literally weeks ago, when Trump was being vague about accepting the results.

> Injecting volatile political arguments into unrelated threads is a form of trolling

We are discussing a claim that the election was rigged, but we're not allowed to argue about claims that the election was rigged?

That is in fact not what we are discussing, as you will discover if you read the article more closely.

> it's not like anyone's skin is even on the line

Huh? Then why spend money on it?

If I told you there was voter fraud, but it was so small it didn't have a snowball's chance of changing the results even in a very close election, would you spend thousands legislating ironclad voting id laws?

I think either (1) there is a chance this changes the outcome or (2) this has a too low ROI to bother.

If it happens once then it can happen again and on a larger scale.

And if it doesn't happen once, it can still happen on a larger scale.

Either way, we'll still have to mitigate fraud/hacking in 2020.

If we had tangible proof of manipulated votes--even at a very small scale--then:

A) We would have "real-world" attack data to shape defenses against; and

B) It would be a lot easier to make the case for resources to better secure the voting apparatus.

There's obviously a world of difference between voter fraud--which happens some amount, but doesn't have a partisan lean--and a foreign state effectively pressing its thumbs on the scales to determine who's going to lead the USA. Even if Russia only hacked one state to give a couple thousand votes extra margin to an already winning candidate, that would be worth millions or billions of dollars to uncover.

Luckily, this would only likely cost seven figures.

If I told you there was voter fraud, but it was so small it didn't have a snowball's chance of changing the results even in a very close election, would you spend thousands legislating ironclad voting id laws?

Well, the GOP has spent a great deal of political capital in several states insisting on rigorous ID requirements while claiming that voting by undocumented immigrants is a huge problem, and it's an article of faith on the right wing that vast numbers of foreigners are voting in US elections despite a dearth of evidence. Of course, these rigorous ID requirements (in combination with other policies) also have a significant tendency to disenfranchise legitimate voters, and many on the left argue that this is the real intention.

Myself, I think voter ID is a good thing because it increases public confidence in elections - but that ID has to be easy for lawful voters to get and keep, and the Democratic party made a strategic mistake by opposing such laws strenuously while having no contingency plan to make sure that their supporters could maximize their chances of voting if direct opposition to voter ID laws failed. Voter ID laws are frequently unfair but you're better off having ID than getting locked out of the democratic process.

If the Democratic party had invested more effort in helping people get ID than in fighting the ID requirements, they might have held the White House. The left suffers from a chronic weakness of being unable to set priorities; the obsession with fairness above all other considerations is incompatible with effective decision-making. This is why no country organizes its military forces democratically.