@mrmhead Said
#2 - Stuxnet for Diebold
Where I vote, I'm handed a little card to slip into the voting machine. Use a touch screen to cast my votes, and hand the card back to the attendant.
What if I brought in my own little magic card to infect the machine?
Actually this is a great example of how it could happen.
Now, let's take your scenario and add in that "you" got to the voting station very early....1st thing as one of the earliest voters so that "your" machine was now
hacked so early that nearly everyone's vote on "your" machine was altered...
Or let's say that you were actually one of the people working at the polling station and you swapped out faulty cards so that all the machines in "your" polling station were manipulated....or let's say that you worked for the voting booth vendor and added "malware" to the coding of all voting cards...
And, let's say that you were part of a group doing this...and your group was sponsored by Russians...
@mrmhead Said
How far could that infection spread?
So I don't see that as even feasible.
As unlikely as it may seem, one of the most common early hacks was to physically go up to a computer and add some "malware" that collected passwords to people's accounts. A single computer hacker was able to hack thousands of computers...
Physically up close hacking is not uncommon.
Is it "feasible"? Yes.
The "bad guys" don't have to do it to the point of a landslide victory. In fact, they wouldn't want to as that would cause too much attention....too much attention = possible scrutiny.
As the bad guys, you would only want/need to do it in a limited number of places...just enough to sway the vote by a little bit... especially in a system like the USA that doesn't go with the majority popular vote anyway.
Granted, the best option would be to not waste too much time and effort on dozens or hundreds specific machines. The "best" option would be to manipulate the voting machines by way of the machines' "operating system". A few people working for a select few number of voting booth venders could turn a US election with a minimal amount of effort.
Admittedly that doesn't actually seem to be what happened.
What seems to have happened is that Russia used their hacking to obtain information, which was used more like propaganda to sway the American voter, who is notoriously fickle and unconcerned with verifiable facts.
In our elections we Americans are "low hanging fruit".