How much difference can a hundred extra canvassers make, even in an election as close as this one? The influx of British Labour Party volunteers to campaign for the Democrats, which happens every four years, is better understood as a student exchange or a working vacation than as foreign interference.

But this time, the Republicans have adroitly turned the tradition to their own advantage, suggesting that these young door-knockers are equivalent to the Russian hackers and agents provocateurs who sought to destabilize the last two presidential contests and who are almost certainly doing the same now.