Experts push for recounts in swing states
Concerns mount over possible Russian hacking
As the U.S. election wore down, Donald Trump repeatedly warned the process could be “rigged,” refusing to even say if he would accept results that didn’t favour him.
Two weeks after Trump’s stunning victory, the spectre of a fixed vote is suddenly emerging again, but this time academics and electionrights advocates are suggesting the Republican himself might have benefited.
And they’re raising the possibility that a foreign nation — namely, Russia — may have distorted the free vote in a country that often calls itself the world’s greatest democracy.
A number of experts with suspicions are pushing for recounts in certain swing states that Trump captured — counter to a string of preelection polls — or at least audits of randomly selected votes.
The United States’ wholesale shift to electronic balloting after the 2000 Florida recount — with its punch cards and hanging “chads” — has left the systems open to outside, malicious tampering, elections-systems specialists warn.
There is already evidence of Russian hackers trying to interfere in the election less directly — and directly in a recent Ukrainian vote.
Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist and leading expert on computerized voting, reportedly spoke to Hillary Clinton’s campaign about the issue, and urged in a blog post early Wednesday that candidates request recounts.
“America’s voting machines have serious cybersecurity problems,” he said. “It’s been documented beyond any doubt over the last decade … Recounting the ballots now can only lead to strengthened electoral integrity, but the window for candidates to act is closing fast.”
The deadlines for requesting recounts are coming in the next few days.
There’s no word from the Clinton camp about whether it will take action, while New York magazine reports that the Obama White House, anxious for a smooth transition, is discouraging the idea.
Indeed, asking for recounts could appear hypocritical. Trump’s own complaints about election rigging were roundly dismissed by the Democratic side, which insisted the system was largely impervious to manipulation.
Still, Trump was talking about voter fraud; the concerns now involve meddling from outside.
Other experts are pushing for a less-onerous audit of randomly selected ballots, which wouldn’t require a petition from any candidate.
Comparing just 1.5 million paper votes to digital records nationally would confirm with 95 per cent confidence the results were accurate, says Ron Rivest, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The point of an election is … not only to produce a correct result, but produce evidence that is convincing to the loser that they lost fair and square,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “And that’s what the audit does.”
Another figure calling for one is Heba Abedin, sister of key Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who urged friends on Facebook to lobby the Justice Department for an audit, saying “a shift of just 55,000 Trump votes to Hillary in (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) is all that is needed to win.”
Unfortunately, though, about 25 per cent of Americans’ votes are on electronic machines that dispense no paper record — and are all but unverifiable.
Halderman’s blog post says some counties in Wisconsin — one of Trump’s key wins — used solely electronic ballots, meaning they would require a “forensic analysis.”
He actually suggests the surprise election outcome is mostly likely due to faulty opinion polls, but says hacking is still possible. The only way to find out for sure is to examine the paper ballots, the professor says.
That the legitimacy of voting is even an issue stems ironically from reforms prompted by the Florida recount after the 2000 presidential election. The Helping America Vote Act of 2002 mandated states to modernize their election systems, helped by ample federal funding.
But experts say the resulting electronic systems — many using out-dated technology — are vulnerable to attack, not to mention run-of-the-mill computer glitches.
Meanwhile, in this election, Trump won some of the key swing states by narrow margins, meaning relatively small changes could have big impacts.
Russia has already been blamed by U.S. intelligence agencies for the hacking and leaking of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign.
And officials in both Illinois and Arizona reported in August that their voterregistration systems had been breached by outsiders, with some sources pointing the finger at Russia.
In 2014, Russian-linked hackers attacked the Ukrainian elections agency, infecting its computers with a virus that officials said — undetected — would have given victory to the wrong candidate for president.
With all the talk of computer breaches, and a particularly close-fought, contentious election, now would be an ideal time to start, Pamela Smith, the group’s president, said in an interview Wednesday.
“Whether you’re in support of the winner or the loser, it’s satisfying to close that circle,” she said.