"undermines the confidence of a lot of voters in the whole democratic process" - how does truth undermine confidence in democratic process? (as opposed to, say, Democratic primaries being rigged, which y'know, actually DOES undermine said confidence)

Which truth would that be?

to the best of my knowledge, 100% of emails released to Wikileaks are 100% true, accurate and unaltered. Neither DNC nor Clinton campaign disputed that

@user4012 When the dirty secrets of one party gets revealed through interference of another government, while those of the other party stay hidden, then you have an unfair advantage for the latter party.

@philipp - theoretically, you may have had a case of mistruth by omission, if damaging content from RNC was obtained but not released. However, if that was the case, nobody on the left wing has so far produced a shred of evidence that it was the case (and Assange of course vehemently denied that he had anything he refused to publish when interviewed by Intercept podcast; but he's potentially biased)

They were also private, did not contain any evidence of illegal doings and 99.9999% sure no worse than other politicians email to each other. Do you think Republicans didn't say worse about Trump than Democrats about Sanders before he won the primaries?

@Cyrus - while I agree to what you said in the last comment, I fail to see how it relates to my original point: your answer asserts that something was done to "undermines the confidence of a lot of voters in the whole democratic process" whereas what was done was publishing true things and no evidence is provided that it undermines that confidence.

@user4012 The individual actions themselves (hacking, fake news) are only a minor factor in the undermining of confidence. They certainly did not undermine the confidence of all those voters who wanted to believe Hillary was evil incarnate. It's the fact that a foreign state can do all those things and get away with them that undermines the confidence in the elected government.

@Cyrus - you're conflating 2 things into one. That's telling. Hacking was hacking and what everyone's unhappy with Russians on. Fake news was fake news (and much of it had nothing to do with Russia but with people earning ad money). I find the fact that you refuse to engage on the "hacking" side telling.

@user4012 Social engineering is a kind of hacking, and includes Russia's campaign to spread fake news via paid internet trolls, who used a botnet to publish their fake stories via computer hacking. I find your selectively narrow definition of hacking telling... especially since this question isn't even limited to hacking.

@user4012 Read the question and this answer again. You seem to be ignoring both of them and instead arguing about something completely unrelated. The issue would be almost precisely the same whether the information was true or false.

This answer seems to be "the difference is how difficult it is to punish the people who did it." However, nothing in the answer supports that conclusion - just a couple of anecdotes.

It is possible to file a libel lawsuit against someone in another country. For example, David Irving filed a libel lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt. He lost because the claims were true.

@Cyrus "did not contain any evidence of illegal doings" The DNC's finance department discussing which of its donors to award with Presidential appointments is legal? Are you sure about that? And aside from illegal actions, the e-mails also showed members of the media colluding with Clinton's campaign on a number of occasions, including sharing debate questions ahead of time.

Just a point of information: the fact that you are mentioning the hackers means that you are directly referring to those who gained information relating the the DNC and published (perhaps cherrypicked) information relating to Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. You mention "libel" in relation to this, which is not appropriate, as libel is only relevant in the case of lies. By definition the publication of information in itself cannot be considered lies. The publication of fake-news does not need require any hacking to be conducted (because it's fake) and is a separate issue.

I cannot even believe how quickly comment threads get off-topic in Politics.SE

@user4012 Addressing your original question of how it undermines the public confidence in the process: the heart of the DNC leaks was a concerted covert intelligence attack to breach government-related systems. The undermining of confidence comes from the tacit endorsement of such activities by the GOP when it serves their own interests, plus it implies the possibility of a quid pro quo arrangement, potentially indebting our leadership to a foreign nation. This is not in any way mutually exclusive to undermining confidence in the DNC due to the accuracy of the revelations.

@Beofett - DNC isn't part of the government. It's a private organization. I could buy that argument if FEC was breached which would raise questions about integrity of elections. Re: DNC-only, I view this the same way as any other activity of the same less than illegal sort (not to beat a dead horse, but see publishing Trump's tax returns) - it's annoying to partisans, but doesn't in any way "undermine the confidence in the process".

@user4012 That's why I added the wiggle-word "related" ;) I'll admit that the actions of the DNC itself (both the stuff leaked, and the stuff they openly admit; see the current defense DWS's lawyer is using in the current lawsuit) undermines my confidence in the process far more than the idea of Russia leaking info to Trump, and I'm very left-leaning, but both do contribute to my believing the whole system is failing across the board.

@Beofett - that gets deep into philosophical debries about trees in the forest, at the bottom. But at root, the whole idea of sunlight as best disinfectant is what's behind the 1st amendment and idea of freedom of the press and religion. At that level; what Russia did with DNC hack was 100% as beneficial as if NYTimes did it as far as overall benefits to the system.

@user4012 I'm not disagreeing with that, but whether or not it was beneficial is irrelevant to what the actual impact on voter confidence is. If facts were the deciding factor, all successful US politicians would rely upon very different skill sets in order to get elected than what they currently employ. But speaking of plant life, we're now branching quite far from the relevant topic.