[ThomPete]

This is missing the point though.

The american voting system is actually very secure.

It's highly decentralized, machines are not connected to the internet, implemented in many different ways, which means that they would have to do many attacks many different places without being discovered to even have an effect.

75% of them have paper trails which would require an even bigger achievement to change enough off as it's again highly distributed and decentralized, and it would require mostly physical presence to do it. And thats just a few of the things that makes this more or less impossible.

A bigger concern is access to the actual voter databases but what they can there there is mostly creating chaos which would obviously be horrible but have no effect on voting.

The biggest problem is actually when examples like these spread without the above consideration as that can trigger the population to loose faith in a system that is probably as safe as it has ever been.

P.S. I am highly supportive of whistleblowers like Snowden but this is missing the point.

[rpearl]

The election was decided in its totality by 107k votes in WI, MI, and PA (the sum total margin of victory in those three states).

You don't have to manipulate many votes to have an election-deciding effect.

[dmfdmf]

I forget the statistical term but after the fact, you can't go back and say "look at this, only 107K votes determined the outcome" because you can always find such explanations post hoc. I tried to search but couldn't find the discussion but one example is how couples use this type of fallacy to "prove" their love was fated. Typically on the day the fated couple met there were a number of unusual events or circumstances (a missed bus, sick grandma, a power outage, etc.) that played a key role in their meeting and the probability of all these coincidences occurring together must mean they were fated to meet.

Moreover, you have to ask; How could the Simon Bar Sinister have known prior to the election that these three states (and probably one or two counties in each state) would be the decisive counties to hack to manipulate votes and win the election? He can't.

[plaguuuuuu]

So perhaps one can only practicably rig close elections.

[parent5446]

Indeed, but the real fix would be a voting method that has defenses against it, as opposed to the electoral college, which is a lot easier to affect than more advanced systems that have been developed in more recent years.

[ThomPete]

You would still have to know where it was close.

[pvaldes]

A lot of online companies classify millions of people by lots of variables each day. You can pay for this information.

[ThomPete]

Thats not what we are talking about at all. You need access to these machines somehow it's not about classifying people it's about getting access to the ballot machines and altering them or their results. Quite a different task.

[vehementi]

I mean, the swing states were known beforehand. A concerted effort to fix the elections there would decide the election, surely?

[arcanus]

> WI, MI, and PA

Wisconsin was not considered to be a battleground state. HRC didn't even campaign in the state after the convention.

[tajen]

I'm not an expert of swing/fling states, but FiveThirtyEight listed 22 states as potentially competitive; Trump also won 194 of the 207 counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012; and finally I count 8 states that shifted to Trump after voting Obama [1]. Therefore all hands are required to win an election, even for the first 49.9%, even if a few fling states make the difference at the end.

Of course, although it's not possible to earn an election purely by fraud, it could still alter it.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/09/us/elections/s...

[ThomPete]

You would have to know where and it's still quite a big decentralized system even if you knew for certain it would be those 3 states. It's simply not that easy.

[onewaystreet]

Beyond the actual security of the voting machines, the other challenge in any hack is making it match the demographic make up of a state. People talk about "red" and "blue" states but the reality is that states are not homogeneous. It would stand out if a traditionally red county suddenly went blue and vice versa.

[boomboomsubban]

You would never flip a county. You would increase the percentage your candidate wins by or the percentage of the population that voted. It's raw votes that matter in states, and it's much safer to set up in your home turf.

[naasking]

> It's highly decentralized, machines are not connected to the internet, implemented in many different ways, which means that they would have to do many attacks many different places without being discovered to even have an effect.

Or modify the program loaded on the machines before they're distributed. It's probably easier than you think.

[ThomPete]

No cause they dont even use the same.

[naasking]

Statewide tampering is still a tempting target.

[ThomPete]

Even on the state level there is no clear consensus on what, how, when etc. plus again 75% have paper trails.