The alteration of U.S. voting machines from the familiar paper and mechanical devices to computer-based systems has raised numerous concerns, including the potential of tampering.
A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine states that elections should be conducted using human-readable paper ballots, no later than the 2020 presidential election, and that efforts should be made to do that in the upcoming 2018 midterm ballot. The Report also emphasizes that “Ballots that have been marked by voters should not be returned over the Internet or any network connected to it, because no current technology can guarantee their secrecy, security, and verifiability.”
It’s not just the actual voting that not be entrusted to solely computerized processes, according to the National Academies. “State and local governments must work together with the federal government to secure and improve election systems…The cybersecurity of electronic systems used in elections, such as voter registration databases and vote tabulation systems, should be continuously monitored and improved. And audits of paper ballots should be used to verify that votes have been tabulated correctly and to detect when electronic systems have been compromised.”
The Reports key recommendations include:
- Elections should be conducted with human-readable paper ballots.
- States should mandate a specific type of audit known as a “risk-limiting” audit prior to the certification of election results. By examining a statistically appropriate random sample of paper ballots, risk-limiting audits can determine with a high level of confidence whether a reported election outcome reflects a correct tabulation of the votes cast.
- Internet voting should not be used at the present time, and it should not be used in the future until and unless very robust guarantees of secrecy, security, and verifiability are developed and in place.
- Election administrators should routinely assess the integrity of voter registration databases and put in place systems that detect efforts to probe, tamper with, or interfere with voter registration systems.
- Jurisdictions that use electronic pollbooks should have backup plans in place to provide access to current voter registration lists in the event of any disruption.
- Election systems should continue to be considered as U.S. Department of Homeland Security-designated critical infrastructure.
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The analysis by the National Academies is not the first to question the safety of balloting that excludes paper. A 2017 Atlantic report noted that technologist Barbara Simons warned that the electronic systems that had gained favor in the United States after the 2000 presidential election were shoddy, and eminently hackable.
“Though a liberal who had first examined voting systems under the Clinton administration, she did battle with the League of Women Voters (of which she is a member), the ACLU, and other progressive organizations that had endorsed paperless voting, largely on the grounds that electronic systems offered greater access to voters with disabilities…In late July [2017], at the annual Def Con hacker conference, in Las Vegas, she addressed an event called the Voting Village—a staged attack on voting machines. “I lose sleep over this. I hope you will too,” she told the hackers who had packed into a windowless conference room at Caesars Palace.Four voting machines had been secured for the event, three of them types still in use. One team of hackers used radio signals to eavesdrop on a machine as it recorded votes. Another found a master password online. Within hours of getting their hands on the machines, the hackers had discovered vulnerabilities in all four.”
Reuters reports that federal election officials are concerned that voting machines that do not provide a paper backup in 14 of the 40 most competitive races “could undermine confidence” in election results, including “… races in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Kansas and Kentucky. Nationwide, of 435 congressional seats up for grabs, 144 are in districts where some or all voters will not have access to machines using paper records…”
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