> The US voting machines are just waiting to be hacked, just a matter of when, not if.
The US election system is very distributed and fragmented - there is virtually no standardization.
Even in the tightest margins for something like President you'd need to have seriously good data to figure out which random municipality voting system(s) you'd need to target to actually affect the outcome.
> to figure out which random municipality voting system(s) you'd need to target to actually affect the outcome.
As you said, no standardization, which means all precincts reports on wildly different time intervals, if you can interfere with just tallying during or after the fact, and you can get the information on other precincts before any other outlets, you could easily take advantage of this.
It's essentially the Superman II version of interfering with an election. Just put your thumb on the scale a little bit everywhere on late precincts all at once.
The fact that so many states let a simple majority of their state take _all_ electors actually makes this possible. If more states removed the Unit Rule and went like Nebraska and Maine this would be far less effective.
> As you said, no standardization, which means all precincts reports on wildly different time intervals
There is standardization within all precincts of a county. And from my past experience as a poll worker, I can tell you why precinct reporting times can vary wildly within a county.
(Note things I say here are specific to the county where I worked.)
Anyone in line to vote by 8PM is allowed to vote. We (the other poll workers and I) could not start closing the polls until every voter had voted. If the local community did not trust vote-by-mail, then that polling place will likely see delays in closing due to lines.
One polling place often covered multiple precincts, so you'll see multiple precincts delayed simultaneously.
After that, boxes go from one queue to another, with multiple queues consolidating into one or two. So, a one-minute delay in dropping off your box to a collection point, may mean a two-hour delay in that box being processed.
> if you can interfere with just tallying
First off, that would require a remarkable amount of fraud. Second, that's why there are observers. It doesn't matter if it's 2AM on the Wednesday after election day: If tabulating is happening, you are allowed to observe.
The question is how to know which county you need to do that in. The more you try, the greater the odds of being caught but with margins that small you’d need to attempt multiple states and predict rather accurately how many votes you need to win but not to attract too much scrutiny.
Decentralised could be each counter putting 5000 or so ballots into piles with people wandering around witnessing for various parties all working a rigid process accross the nation. Each count publically announced in the room before witnesses.
Totally standardised, coordinated, and decentralised. But fragmented (structuraly) or incoherent.
But agree would be a million times worse with a single electronic system
The US election system is very distributed and fragmented - there is virtually no standardization.
Even in the tightest margins for something like President you'd need to have seriously good data to figure out which random municipality voting system(s) you'd need to target to actually affect the outcome.