Texas counties have doled out millions of dollars in recent months to replace thousands of old touch-screen voting machines that lack a paper record – a weakness security experts warn could allow Russians or other hackers to rig U.S. elections without detection. The problem is, many of the new machines have the same vulnerability. So do similar machines in more than a dozen states across the country. Vicki Shelly, the election administrator in San Jacinto County, Tex., north of Houston, said she received no alert from Washington or state officials before the county spent $383,000 on its new paperless touch-screen voting system made by Hart InterCivic. “Whoever’s doing all the research, it seems like we should have been in on it a little sooner,” said Shelly, one of hundreds of election officials that make up the first line of defense against attempts to tamper with U.S. election results. “Honestly, it’s very disturbing.”
Cyber experts, including a team from the nation’s premier technology standards-setting lab, have warned since 2006 that hackers can plant vote-altering malware in electronic machines and some now say the cyberattacks could occur at plants where the machines are made. They say it’s crucial that touch-screen machines produce paper copies of ballots that can be audited to ensure the accuracy of electronic vote counts.
But an obscure federal agency charged with issuing election guidelines for state and local officials rejected the experts’ finding in 2007, and 11 years went by before it recently took steps to reverse itself. As a result, 14 states still make at least partial use of paperless touch-screens, including the swing state of Pennsylvania. Five states — Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina – rely on them entirely, even though paper-based alternatives cost a fraction as much. In addition to Texas, counties in Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky. Mississippi and Tennessee also use touch screens, while 11 Florida counties use them as accessible voting machines for the handicapped to mark their ballots.
Full Article: Voters in 14 states will use insecure machines | McClatchy Washington Bureau.