Reasonably Right: Hacking the election
One of Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump's rallying cries is that the system is rigged. The populist, anti-establishment mantra appeals to frustrated Americans who feel shortchanged by the elite or fear “the others.” They think international trade deals benefit company CEOs to the detriment of American workers. They believe if the FBI concluded they had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” they would be prosecuted; but Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was not due to her VIP status. They believe insider political cartels game the system to control our country's leaders.
So, it was little surprise several weeks ago when Trump – then well behind in the polls – suggested if he lost it might be because the system is rigged; that the election would be stolen.
Democrats howled. Liberals mocked Trump. Leftist conspirators suggested Trump was attempting to destroy confidence in the American electoral system. President Barack Obama called the comments “ridiculous.”
Then the prey became the predator.
The FBI issued a flash alert that foreign hackers were attempting to breach voter registration databases. According to published reports those intrusions targeted Arizona and Illinois. Some Democrats suggested Russian-sponsored hackers were seeking to install Trump.
Academicians warned America's election infrastructure was at threat due to vulnerable voting machines in some states. They urged the nationalization of the election process.
Currently, when we elect the President of the United States, we effectively have 50 separate elections to choose members of the Electoral College from each state. The rules, laws and procedures of each state govern each election. That is why I found Trump's claim of a rigged election incredulous and Democrats claim of a hacked election implausible. There are 50 systems and in Mississippi, for example, 82 different counties each with its own board of Election Commissioners overseeing the election with each precinct managed by a set of local poll workers. Centralizing elections would make rigging an election easier.
(If election security is important to you, remember the five board members of each county's Election Commission are elected this year.)
Were hackers able to breach a voting database, while they could create chaos on any system not backed up by deleting or altering data; that database only has eligible voters, not votes cast.
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann revealed Mississippi's voter database is targeted monthly by hackers. But those hacks appear to be an attempt to steal information, not impact elections. Hosemann said on Supertalk Mississippi's Paul Gallo Radio Show: “We've got 7,000 of these voter machines out here. None of them are connected to the Internet. They're calculators. You put in a new card at the beginning of the day. We accuracy test them. We take the card out at the end of the day; match how many votes have been on there. No way for anybody to get on there and mess with the votes in Mississippi. So the Russians aren't going to do that. But where we've got exposure is we have a Statewide Election Management System. That's the one where 1.8 million people have put their name, address, the last four digits of their Social Security number, their date of birth is all on that. Last month there were 5,300 attempts to penetrate that system in Mississippi … not to change the vote, they want your financial information; they want to get your credit card.”
Some voting machines can be hacked or damaged even when not connected to the Internet. But that was true with old mechanical devices as well when crooked operators could reverse the counting mechanism to turn an opponent's expected 60 percent winning precinct into a 40 percent losing precinct.
Today, professors and students at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University consistently hack voting machines (they reprogrammed one into a Pac-Man game) to identify security failures. In 2010, to test the District of Columbia's prototype online voting system students at the University of Michigan infiltrated the program in 36 hours and “elected” HAL-9000 the D.C. council chairman and caused the University of Michigan fight song to play every time a vote was cast.
No election is perfect; the goal for every election is to be fair. There are elections riddled with errors or fraud that necessitate new or partially redone elections. So election officials must remain vigilant to protect the security of our votes and ensure elections laws and procedures are followed. Campaigns must be organized to identify anomalies in election results whether intentional or accidental. But when either Trump or Clinton wins, I'm doubtful the loser will have a legitimate argument that the outcome was rigged or that the Russians did it. And for those afraid the other side might cheat, my advice is to try to win by more votes than they can steal.