Okay. I quickly scanned the linked graphcommons presentation (?). Instead of responding to that directly, I'll share the thesis I've been chewing for a while.
I worked on election integrity stuff for about a decade. Opposing the touchscreens, tabulators, and other blackboxes. Advocating for better administration. That kind of stuff.
Like with all learning, my understanding of the problem dramatically changed over time.
The biggest threat to election integrity is change. With great reluctance I came to the view that any future changes had to be slow-rolled, even the phase out of the touchscreens. Think of it as how first responders stabilize the patient before transporting that patient.
The second biggest threat is noise. It's the asymmetry of bullshit principle. It's just so fucking hard to figure out what's going on. We spend all our time chasing wild gooses. So much slips past our attentions.
Only then can I think of the actually machinery of democracy. Stuff like form of elections, procedures, transparency, etc.
This frame and my own campaign work (stumping, GOTV, etc) informs how I regard CA and others.
The biggest threat CA poses is Steve Bannon's "flood the zone" with bullshit strategy. With so much activity below the radar, it's impossible to talk rationally about this stuff. Because there's always more to the story. Which is the trap, the exact purpose of Bannon's strategy.
The skeptics say CA, social media, etc. didn't effect voter behavior, specifically costing HRC the election.
That's entirely besides the point.
Other factors absolutely moved voters. We could stack rank them. Comey's betrayal is probably the biggest. My two personal faves are HRC's reliance on negative partisanship (too many attack ads), and HRC's desperate need to tangle with corporate media (instead of just creating HillaryTV and speaking directly to voters like Trump did with Twitter).
But there are many fights in the margins that most commentators completely ignore or outright dismiss. What we election integrity people called "death by a thousand cuts." It's never just one thing that makes the difference. That's too obvious and will eventually be corrected. Rather it's the cumulative damage of 1,000s of small attacks. Asymmetric war fare.
By keeping the contest "close", it becomes possible for the jitter (noise) to make the difference, depending on timing of the snapshot (when you measure).
And now we get to what CA and others did. Buried in all the noise, they used HRC's stolen voter file to precisely target and overwhelm "undecided" and low motivation voters. Maybe 500,000 voters in total. Tiny percentage of the electorate.
And Trump got lucky. It was just barely enough. Smaller in impact than say Jill Stein's spoiler. But on top of every thing else, it made the difference.
("Undecided" in quotes, because that's another topic onto itself.)