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Russia Hacked The Election? Explanation Of What Russian Involvement Means For Election Outcome

By Inquisitr Staff
Published on: 04:36 PST, Dec 15, 2016

The Central Intelligence Agency concluded last week that Russia hacked the election. U.S. officials also believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election. Now, Americans want to know what effect Russia’s election hacking might have on the actual outcome of the election. A professor of election law at Ohio State University recently explained in an interview published by the Washington Post what will happen if Russia really did hack the election.

According to Lisa Monaco, the U.S. Homeland security advisor, Congress wants the public to understand how Russia might have interfered in the electoral process. This apparent need for understanding has prompted President Obama to order a full review of how Russia hacked the election in November. Slate reports that Russia didn’t exactly hack the election system or the voting machines on November 8. Instead, Russia essentially hacked the U.S. voters themselves by helping to influence who voters decided to vote for.

“By targeting voters’ decision-making processes instead of the machines that record their decisions, Russia could influence the election without breaking into a single electoral computer.”

Even the New York Times says that Russia hacked the election with the primary aim of helping Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump win the election over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The CIA reportedly has a “swell of evidence” against Russia and even Russian President Vladimir Putin — evidence the CIA had in its possession even before the election. Russia reportedly helped Donald Trump win the election because he’s the most pro-Russian candidate in history, according to Adam B. Schiff, a Democratic representative from California, who’s also the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

A report published on the Mirror back in November shows how Hillary Clinton led the polls over Donald Trump even a week before the election. But then the FBI announced shortly before the election that they had more emails to investigate from a private server Clinton used as secretary of state. This announcement showed that Hillary Clinton’s lead had dropped dramatically in polls leading up to the election, which meant the U.S. voting public really was concerned about possible criminal wrongdoing. Americans began to doubt Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness, even before Russia hacked the election, by allegedly hacking into emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The FBI cleared Hillary Clinton just days before the election, giving her another boost in final polls ahead of Election Day, but Donald Trump ultimately became the new president-elect, even though he lost the popular vote. NPR says a large chunk of voters were actually dissatisfied with both presidential candidates, but damaging DNC email leaks may have tipped the scale in favor of Donald Trump. WikiLeaks began releasing a series of leaked DNC emails back in July — emails from seven top DNC staff members, including former DNC chairman John Podesta.

Thousands of leaked DNC emails, dating all the way from January of 2015 to May of 2016, had allegedly been obtained by Russian hackers and then given to the news-leaks website WikiLeaks. The International Business Times reported in November that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continues to claim that the leaked emails did not come from Russia. Most of the leaked DNC emails came straight from John Podesta, and CBS News reported in October that a phishing email in John Podesta’s Gmail account asking him to “change his password immediately” was responsible for the hack and leaked emails.

The Guardian reports that Russian hackers were actually behind the John Podesta phishing email — hackers that have also targeted other Democratic groups. According to the report, the DNC received several phishing emails, all from the same “cyber-espionage team linked to the Russian government.” The FBI had reportedly known that Russia hacked the election to help Donald Trump win for over a year before election day on November 8, and recently determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “personally involved in the hack,” as reported by the Inquisitr.

NBC News confirms this claim, saying that Putin has a “vendetta against Hillary Clinton” and wanted to harm Clinton’s presidential campaign by leaking embarrassing emails. If Russia hacked the election, Putin allegedly gave authorization, because Putin “controls with absolute authority.” But what does that even mean for the election outcome? According to one professor of election law at Ohio State University, Dan Tokaji, there is no chance of any change in the outcome of the election.

“Any action that the Russian government might have taken, we might think it was undesirable, but it wouldn’t be grounds for a redo or any other legal relief. The courts certainly wouldn’t order that in this case. None of this is going to change the fact that Donald Trump won the election.”

Quartz explains that the first evidence that Russia hacked the election came after the DNC hired a private cybersecurity firm to examine its computers and found evidence linked to two Russian hackers, evidence that was later confirmed by two other cybersecurity firms. The report goes on to say that Vladimir Putin has been convinced for years that the U.S. government wants to overthrow him.

Vox reports that while the CIA believes Russia hacked the election, specific evidence can never be released publicly without compromising future sources of intelligence.

[Featured Image by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images]

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