Can voting machines be hacked and then bots used to vote like maybe hundreds of times.

[caroldansen]

And there would be no exit polling on a bot.

[NewDealProgressive]

1. Of course.

You can just set the numbers to what you want.

[yardwork]

2. Or every 100th vote could be flipped from the Democrat to the Republican?

[unc70]

5. Or every 16th or 32ndth, but there are easier ways

I think it easier to tamper with voter registration databases. Change or remove enough voter registrations to force a lot of voters into using provisional ballots which are unlikely to ever be counted. Scatter those changes geographically, but target them at likely Dem voters. Not enough extra problems at any one place to be noticed. That's how how to rig elections nationally.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

3. The number of votes wouldn't match the rolls.

Also, who's hacking them? You've gotta have direct physical access to the machines.

[mythology]

4. In theory, but it would require a really large conspiracy and there's evidence it doesn't happen

After the last election Wisconsin had a recount. Some counties by hand, some counties by machine. There was no statistically significant difference between the two.

Voting machine hacking is the left's version of in person voter fraud on the right. It doesn't happen, but it makes for a great boogie man.

[Amishman]

6. Yes, with physical access

That's the wrinkle, as I keep saying, it would take physical access to the machines. They don't have an active internet connection, some of them (like PA's Elect-ronic machines) predate the internet. An in PA I know it would be caught right away as the vote count from the machines would not match the vote count in the ledgers.

[Botany]

7. This could not work at the precinct level

Because the the # of votes at the end of the day has to match the
# of voters. And by # of votes I mean # of times a person went to
a voting machine.

[Langkous]

8. Political Science

When I was in college and taking polisci
We had a professor from the OSI
She emphasized that when exit polling do not match results
Tampering has happened
If it's too good to be true (surprise)
There's cheating going on
So yes, easy to write a program
machines (&tabulators) have access online
Source codes are privately held by the companies which manufacture voting machines

Youtube has video's which show how easy it is

Sadly, without a receipt for your transaction
You can not verify your vote

[mythology]

9. Then your professor didn't know what she was talking about

Exit polling as done by the U.S. media isn't designed to find that as it's not set up to be demographically accurate. That's why they have to weight the exit polling.

[Langkous]

10. Hard to accept as Americans

That we don't and can't verify our elections

[planetc]

11. The professor probably did know what she was talking about.

The "red shift" between exit poll margins of error and "actual" vote counts is based on weighted poll results. The raw data has already been adjusted for various factors, and the prediction is issued. Then, in selected cases, the vote counts fall outside the margins of error.


Until 2004, exit polls worked in America as well as they did elsewhere. It was in 2004 that polling companies started adjusting their results to match the vote counts. Which is a practice that stinks to heaven, imho.