Would the Russians change votes in U.S. elections?

Even after two years, there are serious questions about whether the Russian intelligence agencies interfered with American elections, and if so how much.  U.S. intelligence says that Russian hackers have targeted election systems in all U.S. states and penetrated some of them.  Did they change votes or remove names from voter registration lists?  Did they directly change the outcome of the 2016 election, or will they try to change the outcome of the 2018 elections?

Michael Harriot wrote an article in the website The Root about the Russian hacking.  The article gives details about known election system break-ins by the Russian hackers and refers to some experts. Harriot asks the question, if they could hack election systems, wouldn't they actually change votes? He points out that voting machines aren't connected to the internet while people are voting, but they are often connected before people vote to update software. Votes are also tabulated on internet-connected computers that can be hacked.  Here is another article on voting machine hacking.(Presumably the vote totals can be checked. But any external interference with the vote totals on the night of the election would shed doubt on the legitimacy of the results, even if it were corrected later.) 

Harriot's article was updated because of some errors, but Harriot 
seems to imply that the Americans in charge of administering
elections, who without exception insist that no votes were 
changed, are being short-sighted or even willfully ignorant.  
Harriot earns a extra amount of credibility, perhaps, by being 
a black man, writing for a black media outlet, and claiming
that white people are part of a conspiracy of silence. 

Steven Rosenfeld wrote a reply to Harriot.  He criticized 
Harriot for blaming the Russians for interfering with elections.  
Rosenfeld said that he has been examining the election 
results, and he agrees with government officials that no 
votes were changed.  The real problem, according to 
Rosenfeld, is that Republicans are trying hard in many states 
to cull out voters who won't be voting for Republicans.  He 
writes, "The GOP, in swing states, has created structural advantages this decade (gerrymanders segregating voters by district, stricter ID peeling off turnout, etc.) that add up to a 10-point lead before the votes in typical elections are counted." This should be the focus of attention, because Democrats will have to generate a large turnout in order to offset this disadvantage to win.  Suggesting that voting is rigged and pointless is not the way to do it.  

Meanwhile, Walter Einenkel reported in the Daily Kos
that an 11-Year-Old at a Hacking Convention Demonstrated 
that he could hack Florida election machines and change 
votes in 10 minutes' time.  


The private company, ByteGrid LLC, that owns the servers 
with Maryland voting registration and other election information
is partly owned by a Russian oligarch.  Coincidence?

But just when one might think that our votes are all being manipulated
by Russian hackers, other arguments suggest that the game
that the Russians are playing is more subtle.

This ABC Australia story proposes that that Russia intentionally
leaked stories about Russian involvement in the 2016 elections 
to spread doubt about the American election process.  
The Russian spy networks are so good at keeping secrets 
that the fact that so many connections are known between 
Trump and Russian oligarchs indicates that the Russians 
want those connections to be known, in order to cast doubt 
on Trump.  For example, Craig Unger just released a book 
and had a previous article in The New Republic about the 
long history of Trump's business dealings with Russians 
who allegedly laundered money through real estate 
purchases (although there is no solid evidence of money 
laundering or that Trump knew about it).

Trump would have to be a really bad spy to bring so much 
attention to himself by openly contacting Russians, including
Putin.  The Russian agents would have to be very inept to 
rely on a source with so many red flags pointing to him.  
So perhaps Putin and his Russian hackers really are only 
interested in playing mind games with us.  If they did actually 
change the outcome of an election, and if it was discovered, 
it would clearly be seen in the U.S. as an external attack.  It 
might actually unify Americans against the outside enemy.  
What the Russians have now, perhaps more effectively than 
they expected, is Americans divided against themselves 
without a clear target.  Maybe Putin is smart enough to 
generate chaos rather than actually try to be in control.

On the other hand, it could be, as Jonathan Chait wrote, "It was 
all exactly what it appeared to be."  Trump had a public history
with Russian Oligarchs going so far back that it is impossible
to erase it.  According to Unger, Trump's first real estate 
purchase by a Russian (that he can find) was in 1984, when Trump 
was given $6 million dollars for 5 condos in Trump Tower.  According 
to Luke Harding, the Russians' interest in Trump went back
even further to 1977, when he married his first wife Ivana, 
a Czech citizen.  Her letters to her father were opened by 
the Czech intelligence agencies, who shared the information
with the Russian agencies.  In 1987, Trump and Ivana were
invited to Moscow for an all-expense-paid visit.  So Trump
was known and possibly considered an asset by the Russian 
intelligence since then.  As Chait said, why wouldn't Putin 
help Trump?  Trump is not a perfect asset by any standard, 
but he is President. 
 
That implies that if Putin and his hackers found a way to change
the voting results, he wouldn't hesitate.  We return to Harriot's
question:  If the Russians can get into election systems to 
change votes, wouldn't they do it?

Here is an article by William Saletan that summarizes 
Trump's public statements that clearly support Putin and 
Russia over the U.S. intelligence agencies.  These actions 
make a lot more sense if we consider that Trump has been 
friendly with the Russians for decades and owes them his 
fortune.