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Sure, but I think in this theoretical example of someone trying to manipulate an election, they'd pick the top X swing states, which are pretty well known. Of t
by everdev 8y ago
Sure, but I think in this theoretical example of someone trying to manipulate an election, they'd pick the top X swing states, which are pretty well known. Of those, they'd pick the top X most populated cities in each swing state.
Again, I have not heard anyone say this happened, but I think it's reasonable to assume that the potential attack surface might be fairly small (a few heavily populated counties in a few states) if someone were to want to try.
FiveThirtyEight has county by county election data and it's widely discussed on election nights how certain counties vote heavily R or D. You wouldn't be flipping any counties political preference, just minimizing the win % in urban areas might be enough.
- burkaman 8y agoNow you're trading a prediction problem for an implementation problem as I explained in another comment. A few heavily populated counties is not a small attack surface. You need to hack hundreds of airgapped optical scanners in each state (and they all use different machines), not too much or too little, because then you'll trigger a recount using the real paper ballots. You still need basically perfect prediction to win and stay undetected, and you're up against big election departments with tons of employees and lots of integrity checks.