Let’s get the facts right on foreign involvement in our elections

We know some facts, and they are disturbing. For instance, we know that Russian actors stole data from people working at the Democratic National Committee. We know that another foreign actor, WikiLeaks, published data stolen from the DNC to adversely affect Clinton. We also know that WikiLeaks and others published data stolen from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, in order to try to damage further the Democratic candidate. We also know that WikiLeaks did not publish similar kinds of data from the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.

We do not know precisely if the Russian government or its intermediaries transferred the data they stole to WikiLeaks. We do not know with certainty if the Russian government (or any other actor) stole data from Trump and the Republican Party but chose not to release it to WikiLeaks. We do not know if WikiLeaks had obtained data on Trump and the Republican Party but made an editorial decision not to release this information. I don’t know, but we need to know.

We also know that Russian hackers were probing computers that contained information on voter registration, and poking around at actual voting machines and tabulators. Thankfully, this clear Russian capacity to disrupt Election Day activities, including vote counting, does not seem to have led to actions influencing the election outcome. But what about the future? National popular votes are less vulnerable to hackers because manipulating millions of votes without detection is difficult. But our electoral college system makes us more susceptible to tampering, because simply under-counting a small fraction of votes in a few targeted precincts of a few key states can change the electoral outcome. Despite our federal, decentralized system of voting, can we nonetheless implement measures to prevent voting fraud in 2020, when technologies to manipulate voting data will have improved? I don’t know, but we need to know.