Super Tuesday brings a supersized election security challenge

Hundreds of thousands of voters across the country will forged ballots during Super Tuesday on previous, insecure election gear — even after almost four years of handwringing and warnings about Russian election interference.

The jurisdictions in danger embrace three of Tennessee’s largest counties — Shelby, Knox and Rutherford — where the paperless voting machines at the polls will embrace units with security flaws so alarming that voters tried suing to have the equipment removed from precincts. Dozens of small counties in Texas are additionally sticking with dangerous touchscreen machines that haven't any paper path to help detect tampering or malfunctions. And in California, Los Angeles County is debuting new voting machines which have drawn scrutiny for safety weaknesses, as well as their developer's past alleged ties to the Venezuelan government.

The information is best in other elements of the Super Tuesday map, as some counties and states have successfully replaced their old paperless voting equipment with safer paper-based machines. But even some of this new know-how presents vulnerabilities that hackers might exploit to tamper with the primaries.

Other states holding primaries on Tuesday, including Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont, predominantly use the know-how that the majority specialists contemplate probably the most secure: paper ballots that voters fill out by hand.

Here’s a take a look at how the 14 Super Tuesday states examine:

In danger
Tennessee and Texas symbolize the most important election security considerations on Tuesday. Many counties there nonetheless use machines that do not produce particular person paper vote data, which cybersecurity specialists contemplate a vital protection towards hacking and malfunctions.

As an example, voters in Shelby, Tenn., the state’s largest and most populous county and residential to Memphis, will use a touchscreen mannequin referred to as the Dominion AccuVote TSx that experts say has serious security flaws. Those considerations prompted voters to sue in 2018 to have the gear changed. In September, a federal decide dismissed the case, ruling that residents failed to point out proof of harm.

Several other giant Tennessee counties, including Davidson and Williamson, lately purchased paper-based voting machines. However many smaller counties nonetheless didn’t find the money for or time to substitute their paperless gear earlier than the presidential main, despite the fact that Congress gave states $380 million in federal election security grants in 2018. In some instances, local officers have simply refused to acknowledge their voting machines are vulnerable.

Texas faces an analogous drawback: As POLITICO reported last year, dozens of small counties there lack the assets or willingness to switch their insecure machines, and the state Legislature lately punted on mandating paper-based techniques till at the least 2021.

Some giant Texas counties have just lately purchased paper-based units, together with Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Collin. But paperless machines will remain in use in Harris County, the state’s most populous jurisdiction, which includes Houston.

In Oklahoma, in the meantime, the vast majority of voters will manually fill out paper ballots. However voters with disabilities will be provided the Hart eScan A/T, a device that doesn't produce particular person paper vote data. Oklahoma’s election office has denied this reality — although POLITICO independently confirmed it with two safety specialists — and doesn't plan to switch these machines.

Problematic
A number of Tremendous Tuesday states will use paperless units that have been modified with printer attachments meant to offer what’s often known as a voter-verified paper audit trail. Security specialists contemplate these printers a short lived fix for paperless machines however urge officers to buy trendy units built around paper ballots as quickly as attainable.

These states embrace Arkansas, where some counties will use Election Techniques & Software program’s paperless iVotronic machine with a printer attachment, although a few jurisdictions have replaced those machines with modern systems. Similarly, some individuals in Salt Lake County, Utah, will use a printer-enabled Dominion AccuVote TSx machine in its vote facilities. In any other case, the state conducts voting by mail.

Two counties in California will use the paperless AccuVote machines with printer attachments, but just for voters with disabilities.

Less safe
Safety specialists are additionally concerned a few sort of electronic voting machine referred to as a “ballot-marking system,” which lets voters select their decisions on a touchscreen before printing out a paper slip that serves as the official ballot.

These units have surged in reputation in recent times, as local election officials scramble to switch their previous paperless machines with out eliminating the comfort of a touchscreen interface. But they have also prompted warnings from safety specialists and election-integrity activists, who say they could possibly be weak to attacks or malfunctions that cause the printed poll to vary from the voters' choices. (Most voters don't check these ballots, studies have found.)

Some ballot-marking units print ballots with scannable barcodes. If voters don’t verify the textual content on these ballots earlier than they’re scanned, and hackers have manipulated the info embedded in the barcodes, the inconsistencies will delay the reporting of right outcomes.

All 14 Tremendous Tuesday states will use these units, but to various degrees. In some states, akin to Alabama, solely voters with disabilities will use these electronic voting machines. In others, akin to North Carolina and Texas, certain counties will rely solely on these units.

One ballot-marking system that has drawn vital scrutiny is the Dominion ImageCast Evolution, which can appear in some polling places in Minnesota, Tennessee and Virginia. (In contrast to Tennessee, Minnesota is a predominantly paper-based state. In Virginia, which has upgraded much of its election equipment since 2016, most voters will depend on hand-marked paper ballots.)

Some security specialists think about this Dominion machine riskier than different ballot-marking units because it integrates a poll scanner that tallies the outcomes. The problem: Hackers who compromise the ImageCast might make it add votes to the printed ballots after voters forged them but earlier than they're scanned.

“If the dishonest software can mark my ballot, after the final time I can inspect it, then the ballot seen by the recount workforce is not the identical as I marked it,” stated Princeton University computer science professor Andrew Appel.

Paper: The safest choice
Tremendous Tuesday's most-secure swath of states can be those the place the vast majority of voters hand-mark their paper ballots, whereas voters with accessibility issues will primarily use ballot-marking units that specialists consider have the fewest security considerations.

Those embrace: Alabama, Colorado (a vote-by-mail state that maintains some in-person vote centers), Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont and Virginia.

A wild card
California predominantly depends on hand-marked paper ballots, however many citizens in Los Angeles County will use a brand new sort of voting machine that raised objections from some safety specialists — and which the state accredited only after imposing an unusual array of security requirements to deal with "critical flaws" and other shortcomings.

Some safety specialists and election integrity advocates have also criticized the county’s choice to award the "Voting Solutions for All Individuals" contract to a vendor referred to as Smartmatic, which was the topic of a congressionally requested inquiry 14 years in the past into its potential overseas ties.

Los Angeles County developed the system a part of the county's VSAP project, which is meant to reinforce safety by providing a paper-based system with software that the county owns and controls.

The state is requiring polling locations in the county to have paper ballots available for voters who don’t need to use the VSAP system. An estimated 63 % of the county’s voters have requested absentee paper ballots to vote by mail.

Src: Super Tuesday brings a supersized election security challenge
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