Honestly, analysis of this type (breaking down vote patterns by machine/type and calling out the electronic vote winner) has been presented in previous elections and mainly treated as fringe conspiracy theory.

I think it is incredibly dangerous the way this type of talk (which does not look very credible if you believe Nate Silver's analysis) is now being mainstreamed by Democrats, the very people who in the days leading up to the election were setting their hair on fire over the possibility Trump might not respect the result.

I could not remotely imagine this type of thing being mainstreamed if it was Trump who had lost and whose supporters were claiming fraud with shoddy statistics.

While I agree with you that the democrats are wrong to be pushing this type of conspiracy stuff, I totally disagree that it wouldn't be "mainstreamed" if the tables were turned. Fox News is mainstream, Rush Limbaugh is mainstream; it's totally plausible to see this kind of nonsense being "mainstreamed" by the segments of the media that favor the narrative of the story.

There are procedures for auditing counties can have, paper ballots have barcodes which must be unique or fit a pattern. If voting machines have printed receipts (the only sane way to do electronic voting afaik) the printed receipts can also be tallied and must be unique. If there is no paper trail, you can still check the voting machines and databases for any tampering with a forensics/security team in case the manufacturer is a complete idiot who hasn't provided enough security.

Given the amount of hacking that has gone on during the election, to influence the election, it is worth investigating at some level for a sanity check. The kind of targeting required though would mean the Russians had to have the best polls out there. Targeting few counties in WI, MI, and PA, (and OH, FL, AZ) enough to tip it to Trump in a electoral college big-way? Doesn't seem too plausible, but I'm no spy.

> Given the amount of hacking that has gone on during the election, to influence the election, it is worth investigating at some level for a sanity check

Vaguely gesturing at "the amount of hacking" is kinda suspiciously nonspecific given that it was campaign email accounts that were hacked, and in very primitive fashion -- wasn't it a phishing email that the DNC fell for?

The fact that someone can successfully carry out a phishing attempt against a not-particularly-technically-savvy target is hardly evidence that they can just l33tly h4xx0r into any other target you could name, any more than a car break-in is evidence that a bank was robbed in another city.