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Comment by lawless123 | Hacker News Reader

>Were voting machines hacked? No.

Almost Nobody has been saying they have,(it's becoming a strawman), most of the hacking accusations have been about emails and potential collusion between those hackers and the Trump admin

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The point is, the narrative is not even addressing that sort of issue because there is no evidence that any machines were successfully hacked.

Yet the phrase "hacked the election" is thrown about intentionally to muddy the issue. To fool the low information voter who may conclude that Russia, in cahoots with Donald Trump, changed vote tallies.

This is much stronger propaganda than explaining what actually happened:

Wikileaks exposed a few (not all that many, but some) shady actions on the part of the DNC, the media, as well as shining some light on HRC's true views on issues (having a "private" and "public" position, corporate speeches, Clinton Foundation donations, etc.) All in all, not that big of a deal.

To the degree it is, how is it anyone's fault but HRC and her campaign? Why is dirty laundry the fault of her political opponent? Why is leaking information that maybe damaging to a candidate described as "hacking the election"?

Can you provide me with any evidence of collusion between anyone from Russia and Trump?

I think the main thing is the hacking was done to effect the election and it was at least moderately successful in that goal. Regardless of everything else that alone seems worrying to me

I think the effect that the leaks had on the election is very overstated. It seems much more plausible to me that Hillary was a bad candidate who ran a poor campaign. She played up her "experience" even while Trump received his party's nomination for not being a Washington insider. She has the charisma of a moldy onion. She had her husband meet with the Attorney General at an airport while she was being investigated by the FBI, who subsequently decided not to prosecute her. She half heartedly campaigned in several important states that ultimately decided the election. I could go on, but the point is that Hillary "hacked" her own election.

No, the OP is correct about it. The narrative being presented is muddying the issue. They're not out there to convince you, me, or most of HN, who I'm assuming are literate or informed individuals. They're out there trying to convince the low-information voter, cast doubt, and generally give them enough mental-ammo to convince themselves that their preferred vote is the "right" one objectively.

Of all the ways to influence an election, revealing true facts seems to be by far the best for the Democratic process.

Of course it would be better if hacking wasn't part of that. And you can argue that foreign influence in the election is a bad thing. But the American people really have no standing to complain about that, not with all the well known instances where the US meddling in other countries elections.

I agree that facts are good the problem is when facts are revealed very asymmetrically. Let's pretend you have two candidates, one where you really only know about him from his voting record and public statements and the other where you know everything that they and their associates have ever done. My guess is that the fist candidate will be more likely to win. I think that if that asymmetry is too prevalent it gives an unfair advantage to one side and in my view that weakens the democracy.

> Wikileaks exposed a few (not all that many, but some) shady actions on the part of the DNC, the media, as well as shining some light on HRC's true views on issues (having a "private" and "public" position, corporate speeches, Clinton Foundation donations, etc.) All in all, not that big of a deal.

Really? Because I know for a fact that tons of people jumped on those leaks to say that Hillary was untrustworthy. They absolutely exacerbated the rift between Bernie and Hillary supporters. This is how swaying elections works, by pushing a specific narrative. When that "dirty laundry" (nothing illegal) is illegally dug up by a rival nation state, you think nothing is wrong? There's nothing to look into here?

No, we don't have definite evidence of collusion yet, but why don't you ask the FBI which is actively investigating Trump? This isn't Pizzagate. This is happening: the intelligence community already knows that Russia was behind the WikiLeaks hacks, and now they have found Trump suspicious enough to be worthy of investigation. You can't handwave that away.

> Almost Nobody has been saying they have

It is there by implication. "Russians hacked out elections". Articles and people on social media somehow always forget to insert the caveat there that there is no clear evidence vote hacking.

Notice how many people donated towards the recount in Wisconsin. That was done in large because of the implication of "hacking" as in "the vote count was hacked". And in the end Trump ended with 3 more votes and Stein with a few million in her party's pocket.

So we can say it is a strawman but I think the strawman is a strawman as well as many people believe that narrative.

That isn't what a strawman is.

s/strawman/red herring/

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