
Evidence Shows Hackers Changed Votes in the 2016 Election but No One Admits It - nhoven
https://www.theroot.com/evidence-shows-hackers-changed-votes-in-the-2016-electi-1827871206
======
travmatt
Even stronger evidence shows the Republican Party worked with Russian
intelligence to obtain the voter rolls that they used in their micro-targeting
ad campaigns, but oddly enough nobody is talking about that. Aaron Nevins
literally bragged about recieving stolen property from Russian intelligence
and using that to further his political goals of electing republicans.

~~~
cgb223
Thats a big claim. Do you have a source on that?

~~~
travmatt
Literally google Aaron Nevins. He openly discusses it.

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dalore
So Georgia rather then let DHS look at their machines decided to delete and
wipe them clean? and the backups? Why would they do that unless something was
wrong?

~~~
criley2
The FBI made full images of all Georgia machines.

~~~
tomrod
Source?

~~~
criley2
[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-i...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-
indictments-georgia-voting-infrastructure-219018)

"The good news is that FBI agents in Atlanta made a mirror image of the server
that Lamb breached when they were investigating his intrusion, and the
plaintiffs are hoping the judge overseeing their case will rule that they can
examine this image. It’s unclear, however, whether the image preserved
everything that was on the server and whether the image still exists.

A spokesman for the FBI’s Atlanta office refused to comment on the matter and
referred POLITICO to KSU. KSU did not respond."

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/26/computer-
file...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/26/computer-files-heart-
georgia-election-security-case-deleted-day-after-suit-filed/803579001/)

"The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when
it investigated the security hole. The email that disclosed the server wipe
said the state attorney general's office was "reaching out to the FBI to
determine whether they still have the image."

Atlanta FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett, responding to AP questions, would not
say whether that image still exists. Nor would he say whether agents examined
it to determine whether the server's files might have been altered by
unauthorized users."

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ceejayoz
I remain shocked that voting machines are not open source and publicly
auditable.

I'm also surprised the NSA isn't specifically tasked with a regular, detailed,
high-resources code review of the codebase.

~~~
enzanki_ars
The biggest problem would be open sourcing _everything_ , not just the
software that used. The OS, the network configurations/setup, access
controls/policies, etc. Even then, without a verifiable and private way of
verifying counts, we could never be sure about a vote count.

~~~
rusk
Do it on an openly observable blockchain so everyone can see what’s going on
in realtime

~~~
enzanki_ars
I knew once I posted it that someone would suggest using a block chain.

The problem with the block chain is privacy. Publishing people’s votes can and
will have a huge impact on their life. It would also make buying votes much
easier.

A block chain solution would have to find a way to ensure that only valid
voters can place a vote, ensure that only people that could vote were the only
people that placed a vote after the fact, and ensure that none of this can be
tied to a real identity. Otherwise, either bad actors could place votes, or a
complete voting record for a person is published.

Solve all of the above, and a block chain may be an acceptable way to go,
though it would be a waste of energy in my mind compared to a normal database,
which could easily be exported with only the vote and signature stating it was
a valid and verified vote for a person.

In the end, we have just made something more complicated than a paper ballot,
which has been shown to be reasonably secure against foreign and/or national
actors attempting to influence an election, except in already corrupt nations,
especially those without term limits...

~~~
rusk
A distributed ledger with an entry for every single voter who gets to move
their single “token” from one column to another column with their selection.
Roll it up and there’s your result. Enough bits and everyone can have their
own token that is unique, anonymous and secure. The argument about corrupt
regimes is a nonstarter cause you’ve got bigger problems.

------
bhouston
Georgia was traditionally a red state so even if the votes were changed it
wouldn't have affected the result.

Are any swing states suspected of having their voting system hacked to have
changed the final result?

It is weird that the electronic voting system is u likely to get fixed. I
guess it will have to get much worse in the future to cause action?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Georgia was traditionally a red state

Georgia has been becoming progressively less red, and was early on in the 2016
cycle seen as a potentially swingable state.

> I guess it will have to get much worse in the future to cause action?

At least, it will have to _not_ help the party in power in the state.

~~~
eli
> Georgia has been becoming progressively less red, and was early on in the
> 2016 cycle seen as a potentially swingable state.

I'm having a really hard time imagining an EV scenario where Georgia is the
deciding state. An election where Clinton takes Georgia is one where she wins
by a landslide.

And in the end the results in Georgia were right in line with both those of
other states and with the exit polls.

There's no story here and, frankly, it distracts from real issues affecting
voters like bogus Voter ID requirements, intentionally understaffing or
removing polling places on college campuses, etc.

~~~
tomrod
Under traditional expectations, sure.

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tomrod
We are hackers, and this is a technology problem. Was it flagged because it
have overlap with politics?

~~~
DoreenMichele
It gets flagged by users, not moderators.

Flagging is kind of like upvoting. No one person gets to say what ends up on
the front page. It's an outcome of group consensus, basically.

I don't ever bother to ask "Why is this being flagged?" because the answer is
that the exact reason will vary from person to person, my understanding is
that multiple people have to flag it (I don't know how many) to have a
noticeable effect, I have no means to determine who flagged it, etc. So I
consider it to be unanswerable.

------
squozzer
>Russia actually got inside the voting systems of seven states, including 4 of
the 5 largest states in terms of electoral votes—California (55) Texas (38)
Florida (29) and Illinois (20).

And yet two of those states listed went for Hillary. Maybe the Russians didn't
want to be obvious.

Author spends a lot of time on Georgia, with its "D" rated voting system and
its 16 electoral votes.

>Georgia’s systems would have been an “ideal” target for Russian hackers
because the state doesn’t use a system with a paper trail so there is no way
to audit the system.

Let's accept that for the sake of my next question - would a paper trail
actually help? Maybe, depending on who gets the paper. Does it mean the voter
gets a receipt? That might cause a few problems of its own.

For instance, a group of well-armed people acting as a "voting integrity
militia" might decide to inspect people's voting receipts for any "errors."
One can only imagine how the article's writer would characterize _that_.

Now let's pretend some of all of the states _admit_ their systems had been
compromised. Should we trust the results of any election, or just the results
we don't like? We can reasonably guess the author's answer to that question.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Maybe the Russians didn't want to be obvious.

If California voted for Trump, that would in fact be obvious...

------
eli
This is a really weak article that does not support its headline and veers
into conspiracy theory territory.

------
RickJWagner
What a waste of time. There's not a shred of evidence in that article.

------
kangnkodos
Georgia Exit polls: Trump 51%, Clinton 46%, Other 3%

Georgia reported results after possible Russian hacking: Trump 51%, Clinton
46%, Other 3%

[https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-
polls/georgia...](https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-
polls/georgia/president)

[https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president...](https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/georgia/)

------
deweller
This article asserts that Donald Trump is the Kremlin’s Executive in Charge of
U.S. Operations. That makes it very difficult for me to take seriously.

~~~
rusk
That actually sounds like one of the more plausible assertions

------
hellofunk
This article is amateur.

> And despite what Donald Trump, the Kremlin’s Executive in Charge of U.S.
> Operations, would have you believe

It's hard to take an article seriously when it uses a tone like this (even if
there is some truth behind it).

~~~
pohl
There once was a time on HN when it was customary to respond to a comment like
this with a referral to Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement, suggesting
that it might be better to aim higher than "responding to tone."

~~~
EpicEng
It's not just tone though; it's an obvious journalistic bias. It couldn't
possibly be _more_ obvious. It's nonsensical to pretend that doesn't affect
the author's credibility.

~~~
pohl
Someone should probably mention that calling the source biased is just
circumstantial ad hominem, which is even lower on the pyramid than responding
to tone.

~~~
EpicEng
>Someone should probably mention that calling the source biased is just
circumstantial ad hominem, which is even lower on the pyramid than responding
to tone.

Yeah, that gets thrown around a lot by people who like to parrot logical
fallacies to sound smarter than they are. In reality credibility matters. A
lot. Especially for journalists.

You're trusting this person to report the facts accurately. You're trusting
them to report fully and not omit relevant details. You're trusting this
person to commit to an investigation which is as impartial as possible.

All of those require trust, and trust is built by credibility, which is built
by demonstrating that you do your job well.

So no, of course it doesn't mean that everything else in the article is
incorrect. Of course, I never said that (straw man on your part? Thought you
may enjoy that.) It _does_ mean that I will take anything I read afterwards
with a grain of salt.

~~~
pohl
I see it as a tradeoff. If someone wears their bias on their sleeve, you know
where they're coming from. If not, you have no way of knowing whether you're
reading someone who is judiciously adhering to a process that minimizes bias,
or whether they are deliberately concealing their bias, or whether they are so
deluded that they imagine themselves to have no bias whatsoever, which would
be absurd.

Regardless, you're still advocating for a low form of argument.

~~~
makomk
Well, the article got pulled, so I guess it was a pretty solid warning sign
after all:

"Editor’s Note: This story was an opinion piece asserting there was evidence
that hackers changed votes in the 2016 election. However, a number of
statements in the piece are disputed by experts. As a result, we have pulled
it down for editorial review, and will update it once that review is
completed."

~~~
pohl
The editors are operating a full three levels higher (than “responding to
tone”) in the hierarchy of disagreement. They’re setting a good example.
(Although a bit later than ideal.)

