Hacker News Reader

Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, the best way to deal with semi-autocrats, if people still vote them, you manipulate the election - but of course for democracy!

Seriously?

View on HN

This election is already a sham since some opposition candidates were illegally prevented from participating in it.

So more manipulation is better?

Think of the possible outcomes:

-Status quo, old voting system. Corrupt process with vote results that remain in force. Nothing changes.

-Novel, manipulated system where the regime loses the vote. The vote gets overturned because it's illegitimate in the wrong way. Maybe embarrassing to the authorities?

Meddling with foreign elections is the quickest way to create inner turmoil and conflict. Instead of busying themselves with creating a functioning democracy, you've just created an illegitimate system which will be destroyed from the inside-out, while provoking hate for the meddling party. I don't see the upside here unless you intend to (and are able to) keep it a secret for forever or unless turmoil and suffering is your goal.

Mosaddegh is a great example of this. Iran is a huge issue today because of meddling in the 50s.

I think we're talking about very different things. I'm thinking of hacktivists exploiting a bug in a stupid system to expose the flaws in it. You seem to be thinking of some kind of attempted coup.

There's a difference between people exposing a bug and publishing it, revealing the flaws inherent in the implemented voting system, and people finding a bug and using it to manipulate the vote directly, then revealing the manipulation to 'overturn' the vote. Which ties into what I said earlier. It's going to cause a crisis and it can be used to spin a narrative about how they're under attack from the West and/or America, further cementing their hold on power. Really, there are so many things that can and have gone wrong in attempts to mess with elections that I just don't see the benefit for anybody.

Hey, don't complain - if it worked when the Germans sent Lenin over with a train full of gold, it can work again!

I'm going to play devil's advocate here: It may be a corrupt system, but who's to say the next won't be worse? Far more people are going to die in the civil conflict that'll occur if Putin is displaced. The evil you know, etc..

> The vote gets overturned because it's illegitimate in the wrong way.

...and it's house cleaning time, because the Enemy of the State(TM) was identified and it was caught red-handed stealing the national election! The dictator can name whoever he wants as the Enemy of the State(TM), sending a few choice persons to path of exile or worse, and the public will eat it up, because their country is under attack!

Just think about what 9/11 did to Bush's support rating.

Where did you get that from?

>some opposition candidates were illegally prevented from participating in it

Can you provide a source for that?

The last three years of protests and arrests?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/22/protests-...

maybe they meant presenting its vulnerabilities to claim the election illegitimate. But that still won't work, they will just ignore/deny everything as usual

No democracy for enemies of democracy! /s

semi-autocrats?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com