Our coverage of "voting machines"

Ignoring Warning Signs: Officials Approve Vulnerable Voting Machines

Election officials know very well that using outdated and costly touchscreen voting machines — which are susceptible to hacking and other foul play — will likely lead to programming issues and cause long lines during the 2020 election that will ultimately drive voters away from the polls. 

Though more states are moving toward hand-marked paper ballots, most of those ballots will still be counted by machines. In other states — some of which could play a crucial role this year — election officials have ignored View article …

Georgia Runoff Will Likely ‘Contaminate’ Voting Machines As Evidence

This week, election officials across Georgia are going to break a rule in the election code and tamper with potential evidence as they prepare for December’s runoff and special elections, just as they have since 2002.

The rule in question mandates the maintenance of the internal memory of voting machines for one month after an election. The problem is that Georgia has an election schedule that makes that rule essentially impossible to enforce. Runoffs, like the one coming up on December 4, often happen within a month of the main election.

WhoWhatWhy investigated View article …

Touchscreen Voting Machines and the Vanishing Black Votes

Votes from predominantly black precincts have mysteriously vanished from touchscreen voting machines in both Tennessee and Georgia in recent elections. Georgia replaced the touchscreen system it had been using since 2002 with yet another controversial touchscreen system, rejecting the advice of most election security experts, who note that hand-marked paper ballots are less vulnerable to both tampering and error. A political battle is now raging in View article …

How Easy-to-hack Voting Machines Endanger Democracy

Since the “Help America Vote Act” in 2002, tallying votes in our elections has become dependent on machines that sometimes  leave no paper trail. Manufacturers have “proprietary” programs and will not let any public officials or independent experts examine them.

On a cold winter day in 2007, Andrew Appel, a Princeton computer professor and election specialist, changed the outcome on one of these machines in seven minutes. He proved something that should alarm everyone: in effect, it took seven minutes per machine to steal an election.

In testimony to a House of Representatives Technology Committee on September 28, 2016, which is View article …

New Video Provides Proof of Cellular Modems in FL Voting Machines

In the past few days, election integrity activists got up close to the current generation of ES&S voting machines — close enough to record video of a digital scanner voting machine sending results wirelessly.

The ability of the machines to communicate with the outside world has generally not been acknowledged by either the manufacturer or election officials. Yet this wireless link is at the heart of concerns that election results could be hacked or manipulated, “including attacks that could change vote totals and election results,” said Emily Levy, director of communications at View article …

Activists Worry New Georgia Voting Machines Open to Cyberattack

Thirty thousand brand new voting machines have been rolled out across 159 counties in Georgia. The state has spent more than $100 million on the high-tech voting apparatus. This has been Georgia’s investment in the future of voting, after malfunctions and problems plagued the previous few elections there.

The new machines got their test run June 9, in a primary overridden with technical problems causing hours-long wait times and further cementing citizen distrust of the system — which may also be open to hacking attempts.

The founder of the nonprofit voting-rights group VoterGA, Garland Favorito, View article …