Should Shelby keep the same voting system?
Shelby County is about to make a choice that will determine the reliability of our elections here for the next 20 years. If we choose well, we can have the most secure, unhackable voting system available, and save the county millions of dollars.
If we instead default to the system election officials are most familiar with, we condemn the county to continued decades of voter distrust and waste taxpayer dollars in the process.
Which new voting system do we buy?
Our current aging voting machines are obsolete. The plan is to have a new system in place for the 2020 election. This will be a relief for many Shelby County residents who have seen local election problems in the last 15 years, during which time two election results have been overturned, and touch-screen voting machines have given voters problems.
The best way to correct these problems is to get away from hackable, glitch-prone touch-screen voting machines and use the less complicated Hand Marked Paper Ballot system. Each voter can take a scantron sheet, like each of us is familiar with from standardized tests in school, and fill in bubbles on the sheet by hand to indicate candidate preferences. The voter then feeds the paper ballot into a scanner which records the vote. We then have both a compute vote tally and paper records to check it with.
This system is used in 38 states, and has worked well in Hamilton County (Chattanooga) for over 20 years.
Touch-screen system has red flags
Instead, some election officials appear to be favoring another touch-screen system, a Ballot Marking Device (BMD) system. With BMD, a voter uses a touch-screen device, and the computer prints out a paper receipt which the voter can check over before feeding it into the scanner.
Yes, there is a paper record too, but it is marked by a computer rather than each individual voter personally. As computer security experts will tell you, any computer can be hacked. These experts specifically warn against BMDS as vulnerable to fraud or glitches, recommending Hand Marked Paper Ballots as the most secure system.
Best of all, Hand Marked Paper Ballots is cheaper. Based on the prices charged in other jurisdictions, we could save as much as $8 million by going with the simpler, lower-tech Hand Marked system.
BMD defenders say that any hacking can be detected by the voter who inspects the paper receipt before feeding it into the scanner.
There are two problems with that.
First, recent studies show that voters by and large aren’t very good at spotting ballot discrepancies, and will miss them as much as 90% of the time.
Second, most BMD scanners read a Qr-type barcode on the paper ballot which humans can’t read. Hackers can change the barcode without changing the human-readable portion of the paper ballot.
Thus, no voter, no matter how careful, can spot this type of error.
Of course, no system is foolproof, not even Hand Marked Paper Ballots. Scanners can be hacked, too. That’s why experts recommend Risk Limiting Audits, where we count by hand a statistical sample of paper ballots after the election.
That’s why I’m currently sponsoring a resolution supporting Hand Marked Paper Ballots which urges the Election Commission to buy such a system over BMDS.
I hope you agree, and can call us at 222-1000 to let us know what you think.
Van Turner is a local attorney and a member of the Shelby County Commission.