A thread shares clips from a conference discussing alleged rigging in the 2016 election. The author suggests that the experts involved may have influenced the 2020 election as well. Another post criticizes Hillary Clinton for denying election results and promoting conspiracy theories.
Thread Text
@listen_2learn - The Researcher
Thread with clips from a conference on how the 2016 election was rigged.
How would you hack a presidential election?
Iām guessing these partisan election experts had a hand in the 2020 election because they disappeared afterwards, but they will soon be back. https://t.co/pDHfioOBV8
Video Transcript AI Summary
To hack a US presidential election, the speaker suggests a four-step plan. First, use pre-election polls to identify closely contested states. Second, target large counties or their service providers and compromise their election management system computers. Third, infect individual voting machines using the compromised system. This can be done easily by purchasing a government surplus machine on Ebay. Finally, manipulate the votes on the computer, knowing that most states discard the paper ballots without checking them.
Speaker 0: How would you actually hack a US presidential election? Well, step 1, before the election, use pre election polls like Nate Silver provides to identify the states that are likely to be closest, that are going to be within a percent or so. Step 2, target some large counties or their service providers and compromise their election management system computers. I'll leave it as an exercise to the attacker to find out, how to compromise the election management system by, say, starting by emailing Sue. Step 3, use the compromised election management system to spread your infection to the individual voting machines.
Developing an attack for one of these machines is not terribly difficult. I and others have done it again and again in the laboratory. All you need to do is buy 1 government surplus on Ebay to test it out. Finally, step 4, you're a tax steals votes on the computer, but no one ever looks at the paper because as we'll show you, most states just throw away that paper without ever looking at it.
@listen_2learn - The Researcher
By December 13, 2016, if there was fraud, it had to be exposed by this date in order to have any hope of changing the outcome of the election.
Hillary Clinton. Election denier and conspiracy theorist. https://t.co/ZAna9mQC0s
Video Transcript AI Summary
In 2016, it was known that hacking could occur during the presidential election. The election results were surprisingly close compared to the polls, indicating possible interference. However, no US states examined enough paper ballots to determine if the computers were hacked. This revealed a significant gap in our system. With a deadline approaching for states to finalize their electoral college votes, there was a need to expose any fraud that may have occurred. Election integrity advocates struggled to find a solution to ensure the examination of physical evidence that could detect cyber attacks.
Speaker 0: So coming back to 2016 and the presidential election, we knew on November on November 8th, excuse me, not December 8th, on November 8th, on Election Day, that hacking was possible, and at the end of the day when the election results came in, we saw that the result was extremely close, was surprising compared to the polling. We knew at that point that there had been cyberattacks of an unprecedented nature in American politics aimed previously at interfering with the election. This was all before Election Day, and we knew that it was feasible for an attacker to change votes on enough machines to have stolen the election result. Shockingly, at least shockingly to me and many other people, even under these circumstances, approximately 0 US states we're going to look at enough paper ballots to know whether the computers had been hacked. This is a major gap in our system.
I previously had believed that the paper would provide a fairly strong deterrent, but if even in 2016 we're not going to look at any of the paper, well, it might as well not be there. So at this point, there were 5 weeks between Election Day on November 8th and December 13th, which is a deadline under federal law for states to lock in their electoral college votes, if there was no, if there was fraud that had taken place, it had to be exposed by this date in order to have any hope of changing the outcome of the election. So what to do under these circumstances? I and other election integrity advocates got together and started discussing some possibilities, but we didn't really have a good solution. Was there any way possible to make the states actually examine the physical evidence they had in a way that could potentially detect a cyber attack.
