![]() ![]() New Jersey will begin trying out new, paper-verified machines under a pilot program, but not before November.įor state officials, cybersecurity isn't the problem - even if a paper trail might provide greater peace of mind. Delaware expects to have paper-verified machines next year, too, and South Carolina expects to have them by 2020. Despite the current limbo, the state expects new machines - with paper records voters can see - to be in place in 2019. In Louisiana, the state approved a bid for new machines, but the losing bidder challenged, and the buying process is on hold. Congress appropriated $380 million for election upgrades this spring, but unless states began buying new machines before 2018, November has not been a realistic deadline, officials in these states and others have said. Other states are buying new machines but won't roll them out by the 2018 midterm elections. Georgia solicited information on new equipment this year, and Kemp has stipulated new machines should have a paper trail. The pendulum has swung back - but change takes time.Ī group of Georgians has sued Secretary of State Brian Kemp to force an end to Georgia's paperless machines, but Kemp's office has pushed back, insisting elections are secure and that a wholesale change would cause problems if undertaken too quickly. ![]() ![]() ![]() "Now I'm getting calls saying, 'Why don't we use paper?'" "I got a lot of phone calls from people saying, 'Gosh, I'm looking at Florida on TV, and they have butterfly ballots, and they're talking about hanging chads, and Delaware's so advanced,'" Manlove told ABC, referencing Florida's paper-ballot count in 2000 that ended up in the Supreme Court. We know that," said Verified Voting's Scheider.Įlectronic voting was once all the rage, Delaware's Manlove said. "If somebody tells you that their risk is zero, that's not true. "There really is risk in using an electronic-only system, in that it's not only about the machines, but it's about the machines that program the machines - it's about the machines that tally the votes," McAfee Chief Technology Officer Steve Grobman told ABC. Security experts have focused their worries mainly on other possible threats - such as hacking of voter-registration databases, which could wreak havoc on checking in voters and cause longer lines at the polls - but experts also voice concerns that results could be vulnerable nonetheless, if gaps in the system go unanticipated. Machines are protected by seals that would show any evidence of tampering, officials say. In each state except New Jersey, where the Election Division did not respond to requests for comment about its voting machines and potential vulnerabilities, officials insisted that voting machines are not connected to the Internet - rendering a widespread hack virtually impossible. "The voting machines themselves are horrifically insecure," Ryan Kalember, senior vice president of cybersecurity strategy at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, told ABC. Nor are voting machines connected to each other. "We take every security precaution that there is." "Our machines have never been connected to the Internet," Delaware Election Commissioner Elaine Manlove told ABC News. Officials in the five exclusively paperless-voting states say their results are safe from hacking - and that voters should not be concerned. Election-security experts, however, call for paper records of each vote, which voters can actually see, to make sure their choices are recorded accurately. In others, as in Georgia, they can print images of ballots. In some cases, as in Delaware and South Carolina, the electronic machines do print vote totals internally, for comparison with results stored electronically on cartridges. Those range from Pennsylvania, where three-fourths of the state's 67 counties use paperless machines, to Arkansas, where the state has been upgrading its final handful of paperless-voting counties and expects all but one to have voter-verified paper trails by Election Day. That's in addition to eight other states that use paperless voting machines in some, but not all, counties. Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, and South Carolina will all vote without such paper trails. ![]()
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