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Originally Posted by henry quirk
That is: what did Russians do to hack, interfere with, subvert, or redirect the 50 elections, the tabulation of results, the presentation of results.
And -- please -- no links, no citations: just tell me, in your own words, what the Russians did to futz things up.
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The Russians used targeted social media to manipulate the emotions of the populace and convince them of lies, which affected their voting decisions. They created false narratives and movements such as "pizzagate" and the supposed "secession of Texas" which caused people to behave differently than they would have when armed with facts.
They also manipulated early online polling results during the Republican primaries to help ensure he was the nominee. People are herd animals, and it's been demonstrated time and again that people in later-primary states are influenced by the results of early-primary states.
I don't think they
wanted Trump, necessarily, which is why I believe it's entirely possible that Trump was too dumb to realize that they were helping him, or that such a thing might be illegal. I think Putin wanted chaos and infighting to destabilize America as a whole. He got it, and continues to get it, and will for a long time to come.