Hillary joins the fray
What will the Clinton camp add to the recount? "Lawyers," said Fitrakis, though he's yet to see them. The Clinton campaign is apparently helping find one voter in each Pennsylvania county, as one is required in each jurisdiction to file for a recount of that state.
And what about that hack job?
While Fitrakis is not looking for Russkies in the computer code, he says, "We're more concerned with the private companies that control the keys to the kingdom--to match what's on paper to the official count." The "keys" are the little machines, memory cards and other electronic gewgaws that are used to suck the data from the voting machine--which are carried off to another state for tabulation by a private contractor. Will these tabulations at each step match what the volunteers find in the on-the-ground recount?
One problem is that the tabulation software is "proprietary." A private company owns the code to the count--and the privateers will fight fiercely, with GOP help, to keep the ballot counting code their commercial secret.
In the end, the single biggest impediment to a full and fair recount is that 70 percent of Pennsylvania voters used what are called, "Push and Pray" voting machines--Direct Recording Electronic touch-screens. Push the screen next to your choice and pray it gets recorded. Pennsylvania is one of the only states that has yet to require some form of VVPAT ("vee-pat") or voter-verified paper audit trail that creates an ATM-style receipt.
Therefore, the Keystone State recount will have to rely on hopes of access to the code, statistical comparisons to counties that used paper ballots--and prayer.
Maybe it IS the Russians
The possibility that a Putin pal hacked the machines was championed by University of Michigan computer sciences professor J. Alex Halderman who proposed, "The attackers would probe election offices well in advance in order to find ways to break into their computers"and spread malware into voting machines."
I imagine some squat, middle-pay-scale civil servant in chinos and a pocket protector who works in the Michigan Secretary of State's office approached, one late overtime night, by some FSB agent in high heels and a slinky dress split halfway up her thigh. The svelte spy would lean against the bureaucrat provocatively and whisper, "My handsome dahling, would you mind sticking this little thumb drive into that big old computer of yours?"
Professor Halderman, if you want to help the recount, put down the James Bond novels and pick up some Opti-Scan ballots. We've got a lot of bubbles to read. End
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