How sad. People concerned about interference in elections aren't people who lost - it's not a partisan issue whether Russian intelligence or the FBI is interfering in US elections.

> If they messed with enough voting machines to make a difference, NSA etc would know about it

That's completely theoretical and U.S. intelligence's real track record isn't nearly that good. There was Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, being unaware of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs before the first Gulf War, a false positive on Hussein's WMD programs for the second one, stolen nuclear warhead and stealth fighter plans (among many others); major hacks of many major government facilities including Dept of State, OPM (which include files on undercover spies), and many more; and finally, during the election, the successful attack on the DNC. - Those are just the highlights. I don't feel as confident as you do.

Finally, sometimes government doesn't tell the public everything. President Johnson knew that Nixon was privately negotiating with the North Vietnamese, undermining U.S. foreign policy, but chose to say nothing because (AFIAK) he thought it would be too disruptive.

None of that is evidence that something happened, of course; only that we can't rely on the NSA to detect everything and notify the public about it.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any hacking. Period. There is no reason to believe it occurred. This is just leftists grieving about losing the election, and refusing to admit they nominated a terrible candidate and adopted a platform that is actively repellant to voters in states they needed to win.

By all means, the IC should be double-checking to ensure the vote was legitimate. But the left needs to accept that it was and move past the insane conspiracy theory stage of the grieving process.

I hope this will be taken as non-partisan, but, at least from the perspective of the UK, Trump was the one saying "the election is rigged". Was that reported in the US?

Yes, and back when Trump was one saying it, it was treated not just as a conspiracy theory but as a dangerous attack on democracy itself. Both social media and the press were insistent that this was ridiculous and impossible.

Yes, only Trump said it and many outside his world strongly rejected it.

He was, when he thought he would lose. It's just as bad for the left to make those claims now as it was for him to make them then. Attacking the legitimacy of elections without evidence is bad, full stop.

The author of the article agrees: He says it's unlikely and wants to check the evidence.

The vote counts are off in many counties, including having more votes in a county than registered voters.

It's not evidence of hacking, but it's evidence that the vote tallies are wrong. At a minimum a recount and analysis should be done to determine root cause of why the numbers are wrong.

>The vote counts are off in many counties, including having more votes in a county than registered voters.

This is simply not true.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking...

http://www.snopes.com/audit-the-vote/

Thanks for the corrections! I hadn't personally verified this stuff, and will certainly stop repeating it.

You are commenting about a blog post from one of the world's authorities on voting security, a CS professor at the University of Michigan (one of the country's best engineering schools) --- a post other voting security people (for instance: Matt Blaze) have been pointing at.

And all you've managed to come up with a dismissal based on partisan politics that aren't even relevant to the blog post, which does not say the election was hacked (in fact: it says almost the opposite), but makes a nonpartisan point about the integrity of the ballot process.

Injecting volatile political arguments unrelated to stories is a form of trolling. Could you please stop doing that?

>You are commenting about a blog post from one of the world's authorities on voting security, a CS professor at the University of Michigan (one of the country's best engineering schools) --- a post other voting security people (for instance: Matt Blaze) have been pointing at.

I'm commenting on the claims of Russian hacking being the latest refuge for election denialists. The reason people are talking about Russian hacking is not due to academic curiosity about the security of voting machines. Pretending that it is, in an attempt to give the discussion an unearned air of impartial dispassion, is dishonest.

>And all you've managed to come up with a dismissal based on partisan politics

My dismissal is based on two things: 1) partisan politics, in that this theory is being pushed by the same people and for the same reason as previous explanations for why the election was illegitimate, and 2) the complete and utter absence of evidence.

>Injecting volatile political arguments unrelated to stories is a form of trolling. Could you please stop doing that?

It strains credulity to assert this discussion was apolitical prior to my interjection.

Again, but with different words: you could have written exactly the same original comment without having read the article, because it doesn't touch on the article at all. What you did --- again --- was to dismiss one of the world's foremost authorities on election security as a leftist partisan. This is exactly what 'dang is talking about when he asks commenters not to take threads on generic ideological tangents. Please stop.

You are welcome to disagree with Halderman! But before you try, you should acquaint yourself with his point, which is not that the election was stolen from Clinton, or even hacked at all.

Via "voter ID laws did it", "Crosscheck did it", and a few other equally dubious theories, yes. See my comment in the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13021602

The "foreign intrusion" angle is a red herring. In my opinion, the assumption that a foreign hack would be the most likely vector for vote manipulation, which is being played up in tech circles, is the best evidence that the vote was in fact manipulated.

A tech worker or contractor with "alt-right" leanings could easily manipulate the vote without being detected. And there are plenty of them...

Play up the "Russia couldn't do this, you're insane" line and everyone assumes we're looking for outside intrusion by a foreign power, when in fact it is far more likely an intrusion would come from inside.

I see no problem with being fastidious.

Sure, no way our intelligence community could ever mess something up as big as this...

Remember 9/11? Iraq WMD?

> Iraq WMD?

I'm not an American, but I remember reading that there were (competent) people in the US intelligence services who had warned the powers-that-were that there were no conclusive proofs of WMD in Iraq. The issue was that the people in power didn't want to hear that from the intelligence services, so some other guys (they're mostly guys) from the intelligence services caught that hint and provided the desired "intelligence".

Here's an article about it, concerning the CIA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06.... Here's another article about it, this time concerning MI6, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/18/panorama-iraq-... , where is mentioned that the French secret services had told the British that the WMD claim was bogus. I'm pretty sure that there were people inside the MI6 who also believed what the French were saying, but the higher-ups of course took the political decision of telling Blair what he wanted to hear.

These things aren't mutually exclusive, and I think it's pretty clear that they all played a role.

Also, bear in mind that a determined cheater will take any edge they can get, regardless of how small.

(((Wingnut))) (((Conspiracy Theorist))) (((Tin Foil Hat)))

Oh wait, the right was the benefactor. Must all be a legit line of questioning.

</s>

No, neither Halderma nor anyone else is saying the Russians did it. He explicitly says in the article that he doesn't think that hacking is any more likely than the polls just being wrong. He's just saying that the paper vote can be counted for a fee if a candidate challenges the count, and he recommends that Clinton do so just to know definitively if the electronic vote was manipulated.