For Hillary Clinton's supporters, the skies suddenly brightened on Tuesday.

Donald Trump, the world learned, might not be the real president-elect after all. So suggested three well-regarded computer scientists who are calling on the Clinton campaign to request an audit of the vote in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the Democratic "blue wall" that unexpectedly crumbled on Election Day. They believe there's evidence the vote was hacked in those states, flipping them to Trump and thus giving him the White House.

The crux of the matter, reports CNN: "a questionable trend of Clinton performing worse in counties that relied on electronic voting machines compared to paper ballots and optical scanners." It appears the Democratic nominee received 7% fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic voting machines, which are not connected to the internet.

Such a hack would be "more complicated than attacking an online voting system that is directly connected to the internet," computer scientist Alex Halderman says. "But it's within the capabilities of nation-state attackers, and it would not require a large conspiracy."

Halderman, a professor at the University of Michigan, is one of the computer experts calling on Clinton to contest the election results.

But Nate Silver, the data guru at fivethirtyeight.com who got the election less wrong than all the other data geniuses tracking the polls, says the "evidence" just doesn't stack up. Below he explains via Twitter:

Run a regression on Wisc. counties with >=50K people, and you find that Clinton improved more in counties with only paper ballots. HOWEVER: pic.twitter.com/4swuU70NaY — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016

...the effect COMPLETELY DISAPPEARS once you control for race and education levels, the key factors in predicting vote shifts this year. pic.twitter.com/NYOINx9lEz — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016

Nothing in Pennsylvania, either, whether or not you control for demographics. pic.twitter.com/25moBhv3Zm — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016

And Michigan has paper ballots everywhere, so not even sure what claim is being made there. pic.twitter.com/4YKrZEhTJl — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016