National: Voting System Hacks Prompt Push for Paper-Based Voting | Information Week
Calls for paper-based voting to replace computer-based systems at the DEF CON hacker conference have intensified in the wake of a wave of voting machine hacks earlier this month. … “It’s undeniably true that systems that depend on software running in a touchscreen voting machine can’t be relied on,” Voting Village organizer Matt Blaze said in a Facebook Live feed hosted by US congressmen Will Hurd (R-Texas) and James Langevin (D-R.I.), in the aftermath of the DEF CON hacks. “We need to switch to systems that don’t depend on software,” said Blaze, a renowned security expert who is a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Blaze recommends OCR-based systems using paper ballots that provide an audit trail for counting and confirming votes. … “We know that computers can be hacked. What surprised me is that they did it so quickly” with the voting machines at DEF CON, says computer scientist Barbara Simons, president of Verified Voting. “One of the things that 2016 made quite clear is that we have very vulnerable voting systems and we don’t do a good job” of protecting them, Simons says. “So we exposed ourselves, and we haven’t taken the necessary steps to protect ourselves.”