Depending on the results over the next seventy-two hours, sore loser Donald Trump and his supporters will probably complain about problems with the machines that count the vote and other election security issues.  While every state is different in the exact means that they use to secure the election, most have roughly similar processes that pretty much guarantee that what Trump will be saying is pure fiction (which has never stopped him in the past and will not stop him this year).

One thing that you may hear is the vote counting machines can be hacked.  This claim is a half-truth.  The machines are computers, and, in theory, any computer can be hacked.  The people who raise this claim may even note that the internal security in the programming of the machines is weak.  They may be right about that, but that argument misses that the external security is very strong, and there are checks in the process to detect if a machine has been compromised.  The biggest external security is that the actual counting machines are not connected to the internet — either by cord or by wireless.  The results are manually uploaded from the precinct machines to the county’s machine and the results are then distributed.    Hacking these machines requires having physical access to the machine (which only a limited number of people do) or the virus has to be installed at the company that does the programming for the machine.

Even if you could get to the machine, setting up the software to manipulate the results is not easy because it has to defeat the checks.  The basic checks are:  1) a pre-election “logic” or “accuracy” test on every machine; 2) a post-election “logic” or “accuracy” test on every machine; 3) a hand count audit on random races from random precincts; and 4) the voter logs from the election.  The logic or accuracy test is using a test deck featuring a known number of votes for each candidate including various different weird ways that people can vote (overvotes, skipping races, voting a straight party ticket by marking the bubble for the party, voting a straight party ticket and then marking the bubble for that party in each race, voting a split ballot by marking the party box and then voting for the other party in individual races, etc.).  The test is whether the machine gives the known result.  If it doesn’t there is something wrong with the programming.  And here is where the difficulty for the hack comes in.  The person doing the hack does not know when the tests will be done.  If the hack takes effect immediately, the machine will fail.  The hack has to take effect after the first test and then revert back before the second test — a much more complex hack.  Even if that effort succeeds, the hack has to be on only the machines that are not used in the audit.  If the hack is on the machines used in the audit, the error will be caught, and the audit will expand to other precincts.  And lastly, the hack has to merely switch votes.  The voting logs will detect if a precinct has too many votes recorded.  In short, it is almost impossible in practice to successfully hack the counting process.

We have had years of recounts on optic scan ballots (the most common form of voting in the country).  In almost all of the recounts, the errors are attributable to human error.  The most common form of human error is the voter marking the ballot improperly.  In other words, the ballot reflects the intent of the voter, but that intent is not recorded in a way that the machine recognizes.

For election security, the big computer issue is the voting rolls.  In many states, the voting roll is printed in advance of the vote.  As such, any attempt to hijack the voting roll would have to take place before election day.  But other states (and local jurisdictions have replaced the paper rolls (in which you have to get in the right line for your name) with wireless tablets to allow you to vote at any place in the jurisdiction.  That raises a concern that groups trying to interfere with the election might try to crash those websites on election day.  Hopefully, local election authorities have trained their staff to avoid all of the typical phishing and other tricks designed to get access to the secured part of the election authority’s computer systems.  We have yet to have it happen.  But one of these days, it will happen.

Even if a cyberattack were to happen, that attack would be more about preventing people from voting.  Despite the fantasy put out by Republicans, it really is difficult to cast a large number of fraudulent ballots.    You need to not only create the fraudulent registration, but you also need to get warm bodies to show up at the polls to cast those ballots.  Realistically, with travel time and waiting in line, even assuming that a person was able to create the fraudulent registrations, a single person might be able to cast ten or so ballots.  Even in the closest of swing states, it would take a group of over 1,000 people to alter the election results.  It is simply not believable that you could have such a large group without some body ratting out the conspiracy (and probably before the election).

After every close election, there is somebody with an interest in challenging the election results.  And these people do put effort into uncovering election fraud.  In the four years since 2020, the Republicans have desperately tried to find any real evidence of fraud.  All that they have come up with is hearsay-type stories (hearing from a friend of a friend about somebody who did something) or seeing normal election procedures and deciding that there must be something underhanded going on.  When it comes to substance, they have found an insignificant amount of ineligible people voting improperly and the occasional human error by election workers (which is caught in the ordinary canvassing process).  They have not found fraud that is anywhere near the level necessary to alter the results of an election.

We are going to hear a lot from the Republicans over the next week or so.  Most of it will be about preventing people from voting who have a right to vote and getting votes tossed on legal technicalities.  But in terms of organized “cheating,” that does not exist.  U.S. elections are generally secure, and the only people who are interested in claiming that there is some issue are foreign governments which want to tear the U.S. down, and useful idots in the U.S. that place winning above country.