Elaine Ou, Columnist

Hacking Isn't the Voting System's Biggest Problem

Even if the election can’t be stolen, that doesn’t mean people will believe the results.

October 5, 2016 at 11:30 AM UTC

Elaine Ou is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a blockchain engineer at Global Financial Access in San Francisco. Previously she was a lecturer in the electrical and information engineering department at the University of Sydney.

Clunky doesn't mean good.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images

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Donald Trump keeps saying that the U.S. presidential election is rigged. Unlikely as this is, the perception of a hacked vote may be more dangerous than the reality.

Last week, a Homeland Security Department official revealed that hackers had been poking around in the voter registration systems of more than 20 states. An earlier FBI memo disclosed ongoing investigations of breaches involving voter databases in Arizona and Illinois. All this suggests that hackers may be searching for a way to access election management systems -- computers that run the software to create ballots and tabulate votes.