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Comment by floren | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed now it's become almost accepted knowledge among the general public that Russia literally hacked election machines and changed votes. Even this article appears to present that view in the first couple paragraphs before finally stating otherwise halfway through.

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I really don't understand what the media is trying to accomplish by pushing this narrative. This fear mongering will create distrust in elections and the election results, undermining democracy.

They quite clearly should be distrusted in the current conditions. Electronic voting should go. This greatly reduces the attack surface.

I haven't seen that, in fact it's been the opposite. I've met more people that want to get out and vote, not because they believe in the system or trust it, but because they hate Trump with a seething passion.

They also believe that Russia literally hacked into voting registers and changed votes too. They are confused with the Russia/DNC hack connection, though, but evidence to the contrary has not convinced them otherwise. So they think "voting can easily be hacked, but I hate Trump, so I need to make sure that I vote."

This is tricky, because it's a very easy thing to convince oneself of, given the desire to do so. From my experience, I don't think that particular misinterpretation of the interference is unusually prevalent. In fact, it might even be less prevalent than "normal", considering how these things usually go. My pessimistic side expected far more calls of "Russia changed the votes!" than there are. What I've actually seen in news and conversations a surprising amount of the time is a more accurate definition of the scope of what did happen and what we don't know.

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