The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

J Alex Halderman and Matt Bernhard, both of the University of Michigan, campaigned in favor of a
recount of the US presidential election, which was eventually spearheaded by Jill Stein, the Green
party candidate.
What we know about Russia’s interference in
the US election
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Only the Wisconsin recount was substantially completed, with the recount in Michigan eventually
stopped and a potential recount in Pennsylvania killed before it had even begun. But the researchers
say the recounted counties and precincts were enough to give them confidence that Donald Trump is
the genuine winner of the election.
“The recounts support that the election outcome was correct,” Bernhard told the Chaos
Communications Congress cybersecurity convention in Hamburg, where he and Halderman gave a
talk summarising their findings.
In Wisconsin, the only state where the recount was finished, Trump’s victory increased by 131 votes,
while in Michigan, where 22 of 83 counties had a full or partial recount, incomplete data suggests
was a net change of 1,651 votes, “but no evidence of an attack”, Bernhard said. “I can sleep at night
knowing that Trump won the election.”
But the experience of pushing for the recount hasn’t reassured Halderman and Bernhard that American
democracy is safe. In fact, quite the opposite, said Halderman.
“Along the way, we found that hacking an election in the US for president would be even easier than I
thought.”
His previous research had already demonstrated security vulnerabilities in every model of voting
machine examined, for instance, which would enable an attacker to silently rewrite the electronic
record of how many votes each candidate received. But only this election did he learn the extent of
centralisation in the organisations that are in charge of maintaining and preparing the voting machines.
In Michigan, for example, 75% of counties use just two companies, each around 20 employees large,
to load their machines. Compromising those two companies would theoretically be enough to swing
the vote in the state. “How central these points of attack are, that was news to me,” Halderman said.
Similarly, Halderman’s previous research had demonstrated the importance of an auditable papertrail
for electronic voting: either the physical ballot for a machine that scans ballot papers, or a
countable receipt for a fully digital system. Theoretically, the existence of that paper trail should
provide a protection against attempts to centrally hack the vote.