The Russians just had to flip 40,000 votes in three States

[Mister Ed]

112. Central tabulators

In an to attempt to alter vote counts, there would be no need to physically access thousands and thousands of individual voting machines in hundreds of precinct polling places, as you suggest. There's a single point of vulnerability, and that's the central tabulator, which tallies the totals reported by all of those precincts.

That sort of a hack would be revealed in a statewide recount, like the ones we had here in Minnesota in 2008 and 2010. Every single ballot was taken out of storage and counted, in full view of the public, the press, the campaigns, and their attorneys.

Such recounts are a good thing. If the recount totals jibe with the reported totals from election night, then public confidence in the system is bolstered. If they were to actually reveal cheating, then that's even more important. It's a shame that recount attempts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2016 were shut down by Republicans in those state governments. What did they have to lose, or to hide, in a recount?

Of course, recounts are only possible in a state like mine, that uses physical ballots. There are still many states that use no physical ballot at all. Nothing. None, zip, nada. The count is whatever the electronic system says it is. Ask again, it'll tell you the same.

If the systems have been programmed to report the vote accurately, then, barring errors, they'll do just that. If they've been programmed to report one non-vote for Candidate X for every thousand she receives, then they will do exactly that.

But who would do such a thing? Well, no one - we hope. But if the company that provides the voting machines wants to do it, they damn well can, and we'll never know. Their software and firmware are "proprietary trade secret", and by law, no audit is allowed. Imagine depositing cash in an ATM that provides no receipt, and whose bank is shielded by law from any scrutiny. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

Of course, the fact that these sorts of things could have happened in 2016 does not by any means prove that they did. However, I do not kid myself that our Russian friends and their American cohorts have any scruples against such skulduggery. To those who say that such questions should not be raised for fear of undermining voter confidence, I say that the way to strengthen and maintain voter confidence is to address the sorts of vulnerabilities I've outlined above.