Researchers say hacking did not affect election results in Wisconsin presidential vote

James B. Nelson | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Hacking of voting machines in Wisconsin didn't affect the outcome of the 2016 election in this state, according to two University of Michigan researchers.

The vote recount conducted at the request of Green Party candidate Jill Stein gave researchers Walter Mebane Jr. and Matthew Bernhard an opportunity to examine the voting records, and study whether there was any evidence that hackers affected the actual vote counts.

RELATED: Recount confirms Trump's victory in Wisconsin

"The tests uncovered nothing suspicious," the two wrote in the Washington Post. "That supports a conclusion that voting machines themselves were not hacked."

The researchers said: "Presumably if there had been a hack to benefit or harm one candidate, the voting machines would have systematically under- or over-counted one candidate’s ballots more than the other. That didn’t happen."

The researchers arrived at their conclusion by examining whether the recount by voting machines systematically gave either Trump or Clinton more or fewer votes than the original count did. They found no evidence that a hack affected the tallies.

Mebane is a professor of political science and statistics and Bernhard is a PhD student in computer science.

USA Today Network-Wisconsin reported in March that the state had recorded an unusual amount of hacking efforts near the November presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump topped Democrat Hillary Clinton by about 10,000 votes.

RELATED: Hacking in Wisconsin spiked near 2016 elections

State election officials said no signs of hacked web systems or offline voting devices were found.

"As far as I am aware, there wasn't an attack on Wisconsin," Wisconsin Election Commission chairman Mark Thomsen said Wednesday in an email. "We had prior meetings about that and questions about that, but to date I am unaware of any evidence the Russians got to Wisconsin."

Thomsen added: "It's going to become a significant issue to make sure our (computer) infrastructure remains safe from Russian interference."

Election Commissions spokesman Reid Magney said there was no evidence of any email tampering with state voting systems.

"We're not aware of any emails," he said in an email. "We have not been notified by NSA, DHS, FBI, etc. of any Russian phishing activity in WI."

There was also a report from a firm that handles election data in far northern Wisconsin that detected hacking attempts traced to Russia and Kyrgyzstan.

RELATED: Russian hackers' election goal may have been swing-state voter rolls

Earlier this week, The Intercept reported that NSA documents said Russian military intelligence executed a cyber attack on VR Systems, a Florida-based U.S. supplier of voting software. Hackers used the VR Systems account to send deceptive emails to more than 100 local election officials in the days leading up to the November presidential election, according to The Intercept.

"I don't believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes," Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner told USA Today. "But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far."

Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel staff, Keegan Kyle of the USA Today Network-Wisconsin and the Associated Press contributed to this report.