Voting must: Get rid of paperless machines
America must have paper machines in every voting place for the November 2020 election.
On Monday, congressional leaders announced that their government-wide spending bill for fiscal year 2020 will include $425 million for states to protect U.S. elections against foreign interference and cyber attacks.
Michael Chertoff, former secretary of Homeland Security, is strongly demanding that America must get rid of all paperless voting machines.
He stresses that this is an important, if overdue, necessity.
To secure American elections in 2020 and beyond, Congress and local election officials who will soon receive the approved funds must treat them as a starting point.
Chertoff said that “When I was secretary of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration, we warned of intensifying cyber threats to critical infrastructure like power grids and transportation and communication systems. Interference with elections emerged only later, as geopolitical rivalry with Russia increased.”
One vulnerability that needs urgent correction is the use of paperless voting machines. Those voting systems are extremely susceptible to hacking without detection because they produce only a digital record of votes. Without a paper record, officials have no way of verifying a vote count when a machine is hacked.
The Department of Homeland Security, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and countless other experts have said that replacing paperless machines is crucial.
Yet up to eight states are still expected to use paperless machines in some or all polling places next year.
The Brennan Center has estimated that more than 16 million Americans could vote on insecure paperless machines in 2020 unless further action is taken.
Once they receive the funds from Congress, states relying on paperless voting machines should take immediate steps to replace them.
Beyond replacing voting machines, state and local election officials have to be able to detect and repair vulnerabilities to online voter registration databases, electronic poll books and poll workers use to check in voters, reporting systems that transmit unofficial vote tallies to central locations that inform the media, and more. The new federal funds will help them hire experts and get training to better protect their election technology.
More investment is needed in the preparations and supplies necessary for voters to be able to continue to cast ballots should something go wrong because of hacking or another malfunction.
Better training for poll workers, secure duplicates of registration databases and emergency paper ballots can mean significantly less interruption if registration data are hacked or voting machines fail.
Finally, Congress must work to create minimum federal standards for election security, including requiring paper ballots and developing national guidelines on post-election audits, as well as equipment and cyber security best practices.