My Take on Election Hacking Questions

Did Russia, through a clandestine network of hackers, infiltrate the Democratic National Committee and procure embarrassing emails, giving them to WikiLeaks for public release during the sensitive final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign?  Our own Central Intelligence Agency seems to think so, but Donald Trump adamantly disagrees, stating that there is no way to truly ascertain from where the hacks originated.  I understand the president-elect...he is justifiably sensitive to anything at this time that might cast a cloud over his recent election.  However, not being in his position, my concern about any suspecting hacking doesn't rest in those WikiLeaks releases, but rather in whether the voting tabulation process was compromised.  Let me explain...

Whether or not Vladimir Putin was behind the WikiLeaks emails is something that should rightly be investigated, but it in no way negates the legitimacy of Trump's election.  Remember also that FBI head James Comey pulled his own political stunt (in my opinion) by publicly opening a last-minute investigation into another set of emails relating to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.  Look people, let's face it: the presidential election campaign has always been full of ugliness, false charges, and innuendo aimed at one's chief rival for the job, all of it designed to influence the vacillating wishy-washy undecided voter just before the election...2016 was intense in this regard, but not essentially different than other previous elections.  It's not the email hackers or Comey who were responsible for Trump's victory...it was the voters who put him into office, either by directly voting for him or by refusing to vote for Clinton, be it sitting out the election or voting for an alternate candidate.  I supported Hillary, but I believe that those who made a reasoned, deliberate decision to vote for Donald Trump had their own good points as well, and I highly respect them.  It's the people at the very end, though, those "wishy-washies", who put him over the top...and, yes, many of them, I'm sure, let themselves be unduly swayed by the shenanigans taking place at the very end.  But remember four years ago when challenger Mitt Romney was poised to defeat Barack Obama and that surreptitiously filmed video of him talking about the "47%" was released, sending much of the undecided over to the incumbent at the end?  And this is the quandary that we as a nation are in: the country is politically so evenly divided that, in order to prevail in a national election, it's important to sway the last remaining few undecided...often very ignorant and suggestible...nincompoops over to their side...

Lots of things can influence elections, but it is the voter who ultimately weighs everything and decides.  This is why the integrity of the actual vote count is so important.  I don't know anything about how the voting software for the machines tabulating the vote works, but if there is a reasonable doubt about the integrity of the process among the general public then it is a good idea to have recounts.  So far with the recounts being done it looks as if there is no evidence of any tampering with the votes...that's the best news of all.  There will always be underhanded tactics during campaigns, but people need to believe that the election results are accurate...otherwise our system of freely selecting our own leaders will be threatened...