Do We Really Know the 2016 Results Weren’t Altered?

I wanted to go back to the Senate report on Russian hacking during the 2016 national election, specifically scans and intrusions into voting computer networks in perhaps as many as 50 states. Many of us have operated on the strong assumption if not the certainty that Russian military and intelligence operatives did not actually change votes or manipulate the voting process itself in 2016. (In the latter case I refer to things like taking people off the rolls – things that are precisely changing vote totals but could affect the outcome.) I still largely hold to this view. But the report, which did not find evidence that such things happened, gave me a great deal of pause on that front.