TOM MAGUIRE: If you are not nervous about the impending Presidential election I envy and applaud you.

Oh, brother. Florida 2000 becomes Florida/Ohio/Pennsylvania 2016? With a 4-4 Supreme Court unable to swing the result to Hillary? And who among us honestly believes that Obama, Lynch and the establishment Republicans running the FBI could investigate an election-tampering scheme and conclude that Hillary was the beneficiary and Trump won the election? Well, never ask a rhetorical question – I am confident that Democrats and establishment Republicans would insist that their investigation was fair and balanced, but in a close election, the half of the voters that went for Trump won’t buy it.

Of course, if Russian manipulation secretly swings the election to Hillary this will get as much attention from the DoJ as Lois Lerner of the IRS. And whoever wins, the hint of Russian meddling makes it possible that the losers will not accept the legitimacy of the “winner”, leaving our next leader in charge of an even-more divided country.

Our leaders and institutions have lost their credibility and the Russians may be inclined to exploit that. Yike.

I raised some related concerns, and proposed a solution, here.

And note that if the Supreme Court is involved, it will only be 4-4 if Ruth Bader Ginsburg declines to recuse herself in light of her Trump remarks. I had some thoughts on that, too. The real risk of cyber-interference isn’t even swinging an election one way or another — it’s fomenting chaos. And that only requires doing enough damage to inspire doubts.