Could Russian hackers spoil election day?

They say it’s unlikely that Russian agents or other groups would hack into individual U.S. voting machines nationwide and hand a victory to one candidate or another, but say hackers could remotely exploit any digital weaknesses in each state’s electoral system to wreak havoc. A few years ago, for example, foreign hackers crashed Minnesota’s whole system for several days, though not during an election.

What’s more, creating even the suspicion of some kind of digital meddling would throw the election results into disarray and undermine their legitimacy, four former Homeland Security officials and other cybersecurity experts attending the Aspen Security Forum told NBC News.

“It’s hanging chads weaponized,” said Stewart Baker, a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency. He cited the paper-based voting controversy in Florida that, to many, continues to cast doubt on whether George W. Bush actually beat Al Gore in the 2000 election.