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Voters should demand, at a minimum, that lawmakers amend the Secure Elections Act to ban barcode BMDs and to require that all voters have the option to use hand marked paper ballots at the polling place.
The US government’s opposition to transparency.
In 2017, a U.S. Air Force veteran and NSA contractor named Reality Winner leaked a classified report, which showed that Russia had successfully penetrated three election-service providers, one of which was VR Systems, which services eight states. The next day, the Election Assistance Commission, which is responsible for certifying voting equipment, tweeted out election-security guidance and recommendations, using the #RealityWinner hashtag. Key state election officials were unaware of Russian hacking before Reality Winner leaked the report.
The leaked report also seems to have been the catalyst for election officials in North Carolina to finally submit its VR Systems electronic poll books, which had failed spectacularly in 2016 in Durham County, to the Department of Homeland Security for forensic analysis.
But the US government opposes such transparency. It imprisoned Reality Winner for five years due to the leak and won’t disclose the names of the other two vendors that were breached by Russia. Nor will it tell the public the name of the second Florida county whose voter registration system is confirmed to have been penetrated by Russia. It is unclear whether it will tell the public the result of its forensic analysis of North Carolina’s electronic poll books.
Meanwhile, it has omitted to mention that VR Systems provides not only electronic poll books and voter-registration-system software, but also is involved with election websites and election-management systems.
Demand transparency — it may deter fraud and increase voter interest and participation.
As noted by journalist Sue Halpern in an election-security piece for the New Yorker, there is indeed a school of thought that telling the public the truth about hacking and election-system vulnerabilities will depress voter turnout. But in a Harris poll conducted in 2018, voters said they were more likely to vote due to concerns about hacking. Thus, the apparent rationale for keeping the public in the dark on these vital issues may be a fallacy.
Not only that, this lack of transparency may actually hinder meaningful change by dampening the outrage that apparently is needed to overcome the corruption plaguing the system.
Thus, in addition to demanding that election-security legislation prioritize hand marked paper ballots and robust manual audits (and ban barcode voting), voters should insist that Representative Zoe Lofgren and other members of the House subpoena the vendors to testify under oath about ownership, past security lapses, and where and when they have installed remote access software and wireless modems.
Updated June 24, 2020
This piece was updated to provide information about Mike Connell’s involvement in the 2004 election.
Updated April 23, 2021: I added this: “(Since initially writing this, I have learned that ES&S kept most of Diebold’s large contracts.)”
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