Verified Voting Blog: An unverifiability principle for voting machines | Andrew Appel

This article was originally posted at Freedom to Tinker on October 22, 2018.

In my last three articles I described the ES&S ExpressVote, the Dominion ImageCast Evolution, and the Dominion ImageCast X (in its DRE+VVPAT configuration).  There’s something they all have in common: they all violate a certain principle of voter verifiability.

  • Any voting machine whose physical hardware can print votes onto the ballot after the last time the voter sees the paper,  is not a voter verified paper ballot system, and is not acceptable.
  • The best way to implement this principle is to physically separate the ballot-marking device from the scanning-and-tabulating device.  The voter marks a paper ballot with a pen or BMD, then after inspecting the paper ballot, the voter inserts the ballot into an optical-scan vote counter that is not physically capable of printing votes onto the ballot.

The ExpressVote, IC-Evolution, and ICX all violate the principle in slightly different ways: The IC-Evolution one machine allows hand-marked paper ballots to be inserted (but then can make more marks), the ExpressVote in one configuration is a ballot-marking device (but after you verify that it marked your ballot, you insert it back into the same slot that can print more votes on the ballot), and IC-X configured as DRE+VVPAT can also print onto the ballot after the voter inspects it.  In fact, almost all DRE+VVPATs can do this:  after the voter inspects the ballot, print VOID on that ballot (hope the voter doesn’t notice), and then print a new one after the voter leaves the booth.

Verified Voting Blog: Continuous-roll VVPAT under glass: an idea whose time has passed | Andrew Appel

This article was originally posted at Freedom to Tinker on October 19, 2018.

States and counties should not adopt DRE+VVPAT voting machines such as the Dominion ImageCast X and the ES&S ExpressVote. Here’s why.

Touchscreen voting machines (direct-recording electronic, DRE) cannot be trusted to count votes, because (like any voting computer) a hacker may have installed fraudulent software that steals votes from one candidate and gives them to another. The best solution is to vote on hand-marked paper ballots, counted by optical scanners. Those opscan computers can be hacked too, of course, but we can recount or random-sample (“risk-limiting audit”) the paper ballots, by human inspection of the paper that the voter marked, to make sure.

Fifteen years ago in the early 2000s, we computer scientists proposed another solution: equip the touchscreen DREs with a “voter verified paper audit trail” (VVPAT). The voter would select candidates on a touchscreen, the DRE would print those choices on a cash-register tape under glass, the voter would inspect the paper to make sure the machine wasn’t cheating, the printed ballot would drop into a sealed ballot box, and the DRE would count the vote electronically. If the DRE had been hacked to cheat, it could report fraudulent vote totals for the candidates, but a recount of the paper VVPAT ballots in the ballot box would detect (and correct) the fraud.

By the year 2009, this idea was already considered obsolete. The problem is, no one has any confidence that the VVPAT is actually “voter verified,” for many reasons:

  1. The VVPAT is printed in small type on a narrow cash-register tape under glass, difficult for the voter to read.
  2. The voter is not well informed about the purpose of the VVPAT. (For example, in 2016 an instructional video from Buncombe County, NC showed how to use the machine; the VVPAT-under-glass was clearly visible at times, but the narrator didn’t even mention that it was there, let alone explain what it’s for and why it’s important for the voter to look at it.)
  3. It’s not clear to the voter, or to the pollworker, what to do if the VVPAT shows the wrong selections. Yes, the voter can alert the pollworker, the ballot will be voided, and the voter can start afresh. But think about the “threat model.”  Suppose the hacked/cheating DRE changes a vote, and prints the changed vote in the VVPAT. If the voter doesn’t notice, then the DRE has successfully stolen a vote, and this theft will survive the recount.  If the voter does notice, then the DRE is caught red-handed, except that nothing happens other than the voter tries again (and the DRE doesn’t cheat this time). You might think, if the wrong candidate is printed on the VVPAT then this is strong evidence that the machine is hacked, alarm bells should ring– but what if the voter misremembers what he entered in the touch screen?  There’s no way to know whose fault it is.
  4. Voters are not very good at correlating their VVPAT-in-tiny-type-under-glass to the selections they made on the touch screen.

Verified Voting Blog: Design flaw in Dominion ImageCast Evolution voting machine | Andrew Appel

This article was originally posted at Freedom to Tinker on October 16, 2018.

The Dominion ImageCast Evolution looks like a pretty good voting machine, but it has a serious design flaw: after you mark your ballot, after you review your ballot, the voting machine can print more votes on it!. Fortunately, this design flaw has been patented by a rival company, ES&S, which sued to prevent Dominion from selling this bad design. Unfortunately, that means ES&S can still sell machines (such as their ExpressVote all-in-one) incorporating this design mistake.

When we use computers to count votes, it’s impossible to absolutely prevent a hacker from replacing the computer’s software with a vote-stealing program that deliberately miscounts the vote. Therefore (in almost all the states) we vote on paper ballots. We count the votes with optical scanners (which are very accurate when they haven’t been hacked), and to detect and correct possible fraud-by-hacking, we recount the paper ballots by hand. (This can be a full recount, or a risk-limiting audit, an inspection of a randomly selected sample of the ballots.)

Some voters are unable to mark their ballots by hand–they may have a visual impairment (they can’t see the ballot) or a motor disability (they can’t physically handle the paper). Ballot-marking devices (BMDs) are provided for those voters (and for any other voters that wish to use them); the BMDs are equipped with touchscreens, and also with audio and tactile interfaces (headphones and distinctively shaped buttons) for blind voters, and even sip-and-puff input devices for motor-impaired voters. These BMDs print out a paper ballot that can be scanned by the optical scanners and can be recounted by hand.

Media Release: What Would an Attack on the U.S. Elections Look Like?

Election Experts to Discuss How Hackers Might Target Voter Rolls, Registration in the 2018 Elections, What Signs to Look For and How to Respond. For more information, please contact Aurora Matthews, aurora@newheightscommunications.com, (301)-221-7984.

What
Press call to discuss election day security preparedness and “What Would a 2018 Election Hack Look Like?”

When
Monday, October 15, 2018, 1pm EDT

Where
Dial-in number: 408-638-0968;
Meeting ID: 363 129 912
Webinar link: https://zoom.us/j/363129912

Verified Voting, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School and Public Citizen will hold a telepresser and webinar on Monday, October 15 to discuss what a hacking of the 2018 election system might look like. Hackers have different avenues they could take either by altering voter registration rolls, disrupting websites or changing vote counts. Detecting an attack might be obvious, such as disappearing votes, or subtle, like voting tallies not matching exit polls.

Verified Voting Blog: David Jefferson: The Myth of “Secure” Blockchain Voting

Click here to download a pdf version of this blog

In the last couple of years several startup companies have begun to promote Internet voting systems, this time with a new twist – using a blockchain as the container for voted ballots transmitted from voters’ private devices. Blockchains are a relatively new system category somewhat akin to a distributed database. Proponents promote them as a revolutionary innovation providing strong security guarantees that can render online elections safe from cyberattack.

Unfortunately, such claims are false. Although the subject of considerable hype, blockchains do not offer any real security from cyberattacks. Like other online elections architectures, a blockchain election is vulnerable to a long list of threats that would leave it exposed to hacking and manipulation by anyone on the Internet, and the attack might never be detected or corrected.

In its recent report, “Securing the Vote – Protecting American Democracy” the National Academy of Sciences summarized its findings:

Conducting secure and credible Internet elections will require substantial scientific advances.

The use of blockchains in an election scenario would do little to address the major security requirements of voting, such as voter verifiability. The security contributions offered by blockchains are better obtained by other means. In the particular case of Internet voting, blockchain methods do not redress the security issues associated with Internet voting.

In this short paper we attempt to explain why blockchains cannot deliver the security guarantees required for safe online elections. But the summary is simple: Most of the serious vulnerabilities threaten the integrity and secrecy of voting before the ballots ever reach the blockchain.

Media Release: Wisconsin Proves It’s Not Too Late for States to Take Key Election Security Steps Before November

Nearly 20 U.S. States Do Not Audit Election Results by Checking Paper Ballots Against Machine Counts or Lack a Paper Ballot to Conduct Effective Audits

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Wisconsin’s action last week requiring a post-election audit will help secure the November vote and should be followed by states that lack such protections, according to Public Citizen and Verified Voting.

On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) took a key step to secure the vote by requiring an audit of November’s election results before they are made official. The commission voted to randomly select five percent of voting machines in the state to be audited the day after the 2018 general election. For the audit, municipal clerks will hand count ballots from randomly selected machines, comparing what’s on the paper ballot to what the machine recorded. They will do this across four races before the vote count is finalized. (See WEC meeting minutes pages 34 and 49.)

Wisconsin’s action shows that it’s not too late to commit to auditing the 2018 vote counts before finalizing results, Public Citizen and Verified Voting said. Votes can – and should – be checked against voter-marked paper ballots for accuracy.

Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting Testimony before the Pennsylvania Senate State Government Committee

Written Testimony of Verified Voting.org President Marian K. Schneider before the Pennsylvania Senate State Government Committee Public Hearing on Senate Bill 1249 and Voting Machine Demonstration, September 25, 2018. Download as PDF.

Thank you Chairman Folmer, Minority Chair Williams, and members of the Committee for allowing Verified Voting to submit written testimony in connection with the Senate State Government Committee hearing. We write to address the security risks presented for Pennsylvania’s counties and the need to expeditiously replace aging and vulnerable electronic voting systems. We urge the Committee to recommend that the Commonwealth appropriate adequate funding to permit counties to replace their aging electronic voting systems as soon as possible.

Verified Voting is a national non-partisan, non-profit research and advocacy organization committed to safeguarding elections in the digital age. Founded by computer scientists, Verified Voting’s mission is to advocate for the responsible use of emerging technologies to ensure that Americans can be confident their votes will be cast as intended and counted as cast. We promote auditable, accessible and resilient voting for all eligible citizens. Our board of directors and board of advisors include some of the top computer scientists, cyber security experts and statisticians working in the election administration arena as well as former and current elections officials. Verified Voting has no financial interest in the type of equipment used. Our goal is for every jurisdiction in the United States to have secure and verifiable elections.

There are two basic kinds of electronic voting systems in use in Pennsylvania: Direct recording electronic (DRE) or optical scan systems. Both types of systems are computers, and both are prepared in similar ways. The primary difference is that an optical scan system incorporates a voter-marked paper ballot, marked either with a pen or pencil or with a ballot marking device and that ballot is retained for recounts or audits. Optical scan systems leverage the speed of the computer to report unofficial results quickly. The presence and availability of that paper ballot provides a trustworthy record of voter intent and allows jurisdictions to monitor their system for problems, detect any problems, (either hacking or error), respond to them and recover by, if necessary, hand counting the paper ballots. Seventeen counties in Pennsylvania already benefit from the security protection of paper ballots.

Verified Voting Blog: Serious design flaw in ESS ExpressVote touchscreen: “permission to cheat” | Andrew Appel

This article was originally posted at the Freedom to Tinker blog.

Kansas, Delaware, and New Jersey are in the process of purchasing voting machines with a serious design flaw, and they should reconsider while there is still time!

Over the past 15 years, almost all the states have moved away from paperless touchscreen voting systems (DREs) to optical-scan paper ballots.  They’ve done so because if a paperless touchscreen is hacked to give fraudulent results, there’s no way to know and no way to correct; but if an optical scanner were hacked to give fraudulent results, the fraud could be detected by a random audit of the paper ballots that the voters actually marked, and corrected by a recount of those paper ballots.

Optical-scan ballots marked by the voters are the most straightforward way to make sure that the computers are not manipulating the vote.  Second-best, in my opinion, is the use of a ballot-marking device (BMD), where the voter uses a touchscreen to choose candidates, then the touchscreen prints out an optical-scan ballot that the voter can then deposit in a ballot box or into an optical scanner.  Why is this second-best?  Because (1) most voters are not very good at inspecting their computer-marked ballot carefully, so hacked BMDs could change some choices and the voter might not notice, or might notice and think it’s the voter’s own error; and (2) the dispute-resolution mechanism is unclear; pollworkers can’t tell if it’s the machine’s fault or your fault; at best you raise your hand and get a new ballot, try again, and this time the machine “knows” not to cheat.

Verified Voting Blog: Four ways to defend democracy and protect every voter’s ballot | Douglas W. Jones

This article was originally posted at phys.org.
As voters prepare to cast their ballots in the November midterm elections, it’s clear that U.S. voting is under electronic attack. Russian government hackers probed some states’ computer systems in the runup to the 2016 presidential election and are likely to do so again – as might hackers from other countries or nongovernmental groups interested in sowing discord in American politics.

Fortunately, there are ways to defend elections. Some of them will be new in some places, but these defenses are not particularly difficult nor expensive, especially when judged against the value of public confidence in democracy. I served on the Iowa board that examines voting machines from 1995 to 2004 and on the Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the United States Election Assistance Commission from 2009 to 2012, and Barbara Simons and I coauthored the 2012 book “Broken Ballots.”

Election officials have an important role to play in protecting election integrity. Citizens, too, need to ensure their local voting processes are safe. There are two parts to any voting system: the computerized systems tracking voters’ registrations and the actual process of voting – from preparing ballots through results tallying and reporting.

Verified Voting Blog: The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine releases report on “The Future of Voting”

Today the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report on election security, “Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy.” The Committee for The Future of Voting, which includes Verified Voting Board member Ron Rivest and Advisory Board member Andrew Appel, released the report at a public event in Washington, DC, where the report’s findings and key recommendations were discussed. Included in the Committee’s recommendations, which echo many of Verified Voting’s policies, were:

  • Human-readable paper ballots, made available for all elections as soon as 2018
  • State-mandated risk-limiting audits
  • Increased funding to state and local governments for cybersecurity and election infrastructure

In addition to Ron Rivest and Andrew Appel, Verified Voting’s own Barbara Simons, David Dill, Philip Stark, Matt Blaze, Doug Kellner, and Alex Halderman reviewed the report ahead of its release.

To read the full report and recommendations, visit nap.edu/FutureOfVoting

Verified Voting Blog: The Myth of “Secure” Blockchain Voting

Several startup companies have recently begun to promote Internet voting systems, but with a new twist – using a blockchain as the container for voted ballots transmitted over the Internet from the voter’s private device. Blockchains are a relatively new system category a little akin to a distributed database. Proponents of blockchain voting promote it as a revolutionary innovation providing strong security guarantees that enable truly secure online elections. Unfortunately, these claims are false. Blockchains do not offer any real election security at all.

Internet voting has been studied by computer security researchers for over twenty years. Cyber security experts universally agree that no technology, including blockchains, can adequately secure an online public election. Elections have unique security and privacy requirements fundamentally different from and much more stringent than those in other applications, such as e-commerce. They are uniquely vulnerable because anyone on Earth can attack them, and a successful cyberattack might go completely undetected, resulting in the wrong people elected with no evidence that anything was amiss.

Verified Voting Blog: Pamela Smith: Testimony Submitted to the Little Hoover Commission

Download Testimony as a PDF

Honorable Members of the Commission: I serve as Senior Advisor to Verified Voting, a national non-partisan non-profit educational and advocacy organization committed to safeguarding elections in the digital age. Verified Voting advocates for the responsible use of emerging technologies to ensure that Americans can be confident their votes will be cast as intended and counted as cast. We promote auditable, accessible and resilient voting for all eligible citizens. I previously served as President of Verified Voting for more than a decade. I have provided information and testimony on voting technology and policy issues at federal and state levels, including to the US House of Representatives Committee on House Administration, and earlier this year at the Joint Hearing of Assembly Elections and Redistricting and Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committees, on Cybersecurity and California’s Elections.[1. March 7, 2018. https://selc.senate.ca.gov/content/oversightinformational-hearings]

I have curated an extensive information resource on election equipment and regulations nationwide, and co-authored several key works on election security policy, including Principles & Best Practices for Post Election Audits[2. Electionaudits.org/principles] and the introductory chapter of Confirming Elections: Creating Confidence and Integrity through Election Auditing.[3. Palgrave/MacMillan, 2012.] I participate in the Future of California Elections, a collaboration between election officials, civil rights organizations and election reform advocates to examine and address the unique challenges facing the State of California’s election system.[4.  Futureofcaelections.org] I also serve on the Los Angeles County Voting Systems for All People (VSAP) Technical Advisory Committee.[5. vsap.lavote.net]

In my capacity at Verified Voting I have worked with advocates, election officials and lawmakers from all across the country. In my view, the states that do the best on metrics relating to voting system security are often the ones that continue to look for and embrace opportunities to improve. As security threats do not stand still, neither can those whose work it is to safeguard our elections and consequently our democracy. I applaud the Little Hoover Commission for taking up this crucial topic of investigation, and am pleased to participate in and contribute to that effort.

Election security is not an on-off switch, where a thing either is secure or it is not. Rather it involves incrementing layers of effort, analysis, systems and procedures, all created or conducted by people, all while balancing costs and priorities. Such incremental measures harden a system, making it more secure than before and solving for problems when they occur. Perfect security is not attainable, but diligence in the pursuit of secure elections is.

Post Election Audits: Verified Voting’s Guide to RLAs in One Infographic

Verified Voting debuted its latest infographic, “A Flowchart for Conducting Risk-Limiting Audits,” at the National Association of Secretaries of States (NASS) 2018 Summer Conference in Philadelphia. In addition to sharing this with election officials at the conferences this summer, Verified Voting is working closely with jurisdictions to demonstrate how to implement robust post-election audits. Check it out below:

RLA Flowchart

This handy flowchart explains the process of conducting a risk-limiting-audit (RLA)

The infographic is part of a series of visuals Verified Voting is creating. This piece breaks down RLAs in a flowchart, and follows the release of “Safeguarding Our Elections: The Solutions to Vulnerabilities in Election Security,” this past June. You can download the infographic here or find it on our Twitter or Facebook.

Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting Designs New Ways to Think About Election Security

Summer is here and that means Verified Voting’s work is heating up! In the past few months Verified Voting has added staff, increased our state work, produced a valuable toolkit for election officials and advocates that received press in POLITICO and The Hill and created a set of infographics and maps which appeared in the Wall Street Journal and NPR (make sure to scroll down to see Verified Voting’s latest infographic: “Safeguarding Our Elections: The Solutions to Vulnerabilities in Election Security”).

The media continues to be instrumental in helping us raise awareness about safeguarding elections. Here are some recent highlights:

Fast Company – How U.S. Election Officials Are Trying To Head Off The Hackers
Bloomberg – Hack-Resistant Vote Machines Missing as States Gird for ’18 Vote
Reuters – Ahead of November election, old voting machines stir concerns among U.S. officials
Washington Post – How Colorado became the safest state to cast a vote
Associated Press – Election Hacking Puts Focus on Paperless Voting Machines
Axios – Exclusive poll: Majority expects foreign meddling in midterms
POLITICO – Election system experts debate merits of wireless tech in voting machines

Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting’s Guide to Election Security in One Infographic

Verified Voting has gone visual! In addition to recently collaborating with the Wall Street Journal and NPR on maps depicting voting technology across the states, Verified Voting created its own infographic: “Safeguarding Our Elections: The Solutions to Vulnerabilities in Election Security.”

The infographic is the first in a series of visuals Verified Voting is creating. This piece breaks down the state of our elections, which states are most vulnerable, the solution and what people can do. We urge you to take a look and share with your networks. You can download infographic or find it on our Twitter or Facebook.

Media Release: Toolkit Advises Advocates and Election Officials on How to Secure the Nation’s Voting Machines

A joint project from Verified Voting, the Brennan Center, Common Cause and the National Election Defense Coalition suggests ways states can use Congressional election security funds.

Download the toolkit as a PDF. For additional media inquires, please contact aurora@newheightscommunications.com.

A new toolkit designed for advocates and election officials offers suggestions for best practices for conducting post-election audits as well as tips for local jurisdictions considering purchasing new voting machines. The toolkit, “Securing the Nation’s Voting Machines,” is a joint project between Verified Voting, the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause and the National Election Defense Coalition.

“Cyber security experts agree that our voting systems need to be resilient and allow jurisdictions to monitor, detect, respond and recover from an event that interferes with the software. Resilient systems incorporate a paper ballot that is retained for recounts and post-election audits,” said Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting. “This toolkit provides a roadmap for election officials nationwide who are looking to implement these resilient systems.”

Verified Voting Blog: Letter to State Election Officials on Best Practices for Voting Funds

Download letter as PDF

On March 23rd, Congress allocated $380 million to states to upgrade election security. This is a positive development. In the age of unprecedented hacking risks, researchers have found that electronic voting infrastructure — including voting machines and registration databases — have serious vulnerabilities. While there’s no evidence that vote totals were hacked in 2016, there’s strong evidence that hackers have been testing the waters.

While federal funding can help states address these issues, simply upgrading or replacing election infrastructure is not sufficient. It is essential that states work with the Department of Homeland Security or other trusted providers to scan their systems for cyber vulnerabilities, and follow best practices identified by computer scientists, national security leaders, and bipartisan experts in elections administration to mitigate hacking risks. On March 20, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its long-awaited recommendations on election security and concluded that requiring paper ballots, banning wireless components and implementing statistically sound audits of election results are essential safeguards. Last year, a group of 100 leading computer scientists and other election administration experts voiced the same conclusion. Through years of researching voting equipment security in real election administration environments, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has come to similar conclusions about what it will take to defend elections.

Verified Voting Blog: Bruce Schneier: American elections are too easy to hack. We must take action now.

This article was published by The Guardian on April 18, 2018. Bruce Schneier is a fellow and lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the advisory board of Verified Voting.

Elections serve two purposes. The first, and obvious, purpose is to accurately choose the winner. But the second is equally important: to convince the loser. To the extent that an election system is not transparently and auditably accurate, it fails in that second purpose. Our election systems are failing, and we need to fix them.

Today, we conduct our elections on computers. Our registration lists are in computer databases. We vote on computerized voting machines. And our tabulation and reporting is done on computers. We do this for a lot of good reasons, but a side effect is that elections now have all the insecurities inherent in computers. The only way to reliably protect elections from both malice and accident is to use something that is not hackable or unreliable at scale; the best way to do that is to back up as much of the system as possible with paper.

Recently, there have been two graphic demonstrations of how bad our computerized voting system is. In 2007, the states of California and Ohio conducted audits of their electronic voting machines. Expert review teams found exploitable vulnerabilities in almost every component they examined. The researchers were able to undetectably alter vote tallies, erase audit logs, and load malware on to the systems. Some of their attacks could be implemented by a single individual with no greater access than a normal poll worker; others could be done remotely.

Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting Hacks into Voting Machine in New Video from the New York Times

Demonstration Shows Vulnerability of Voting Machines With No Paper Backup

The New York Times published an interactive piece on election security today that included a video featuring Verified Voting fellow, Alex Halderman. The piece, “I Hacked an Election. So Can the Russians,” was the result of a months-long collaboration between Verified Voting and the New York Times.

[media url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8eujrTyRRE” width=”800″ height=”502″ jwplayer=”controlbar=bottom”][spacer=10]
[spoiler title=”How Will My Vote Be Counted?” open=”1″ style=”2″]

“Alex Halderman, along with the New York Times, successfully demonstrated how vulnerable these voting machines can be,” said Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting. “We want people to understand in a visual way how something like this might happen. Although it is only a risk and not a certainty that something like this could occur, we need to be prepared and able to recover. These machines don’t allow us to do that. It’s time we prepare to monitor, detect, respond and recover from any potential attacks that undermine our democracy.”

“All cyber security experts who have given electronic voting machines any thought agree, these machines have got to go,” said Alex Halderman in the video. “Paper plus audits; all elections should be done this way,”

Verified Voting Blog: Proposed election security panel for Netroots Nation 2018

Election security is the way we protect our elections from interference and allow voters to feel confident that their vote is being counted. Being able to trust election results is a cornerstone of democracy. 2016 was a harsh reminder of what can happen when we don’t have secure election systems- and demonstrates the need for us to act quickly. Luckily, we can all ensure the safety of our elections, by working with our local and state election officials to make sure all of our votes are counted.

The key takeaways are that the reforms (paper ballots and robust audits) are not only totally possible, but super important. Every major reform that has been passed at the state level has been lead by grassroots activists who knew how important it was to make sure our votes are counted. The progressive movement, in light of the interference in the 2016 election, has been calling on us to understand how to advocate for these campaigns.Election Security is often seen as a wonky, insider issue.

Verified Voting Blog: Federal Funds for Election Security: Will They Cover the Costs of Voter Marked Paper Ballots?

Download the Brennan Center/Verified Voting Full Report (PDF)

Under the terms of the omnibus spending bill voted on by the House, states will receive $380 million within months to start to strengthen the security of our nation’s election infrastructure. This near-term funding is the product of tireless work by members of both parties, and a critical acknowledgment from Congress that protecting our elections is a matter of national security. States can use the funding immediately to begin deploying paper ballots, post-election audits, and other essential cybersecurity improvements. However, the new funding is only a first step, as many in Congress have acknowledged, and further Congressional action will be necessary in order to ensure that future elections are secure.

Most significantly, the omnibus funding as allocated to the states under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) will not be enough for some states to replace their insecure voting machines. Because paperless electronic voting systems are highly vulnerable to cyberattacks, it is urgent that those systems be replaced as soon as possible, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) recommended earlier this week. Until this is done, it will be impossible to ensure that election results as reported by the voting system have not been corrupted by a cyberattack.

Thirteen states, including key swing states like Pennsylvania, continue to use paperless voting today. One of the main reasons is cost: cash-strapped states simply can’t afford to replace this aging equipment. Unfortunately, our analysis shows that under the new federal funding, five of the 13 states with paperless machines will receive less than 25 percent of the money they may need to replace them. Moreover, most states will also need to use some of the new funding to pay for improved auditing and other security measures, leaving even less for crucial technology upgrades.

Media Release: Verified Voting Opposes Georgia’s Current Voting Machine Legislation

Marian K. Schneider: “[T]he current bill will perpetuate the cycle of unverifiable voting in Georgia. Verified Voting cannot support the bill unless significant changes are made.”

The following is a statement from Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, about why Georgia’s current Senate Bill 403 cannot ensure a verifiable and accurate election system. For additional media inquires, please contact aurora@newheightscommunications.com

“Georgia voters need a secure voting system with voter-marked paper ballots and audits, but instead, Georgia’s electoral system is left insecure and unverifiable. The current version of Senate Bill 403, which recently passed the House Government Affairs Committee, has morphed into a sweetheart deal for a group of voting machine vendors. Georgia voters are simply demanding a verifiable secure election system …nothing more.

Verified Voting Blog: Pennsylvania Takes Critical Steps Toward Election Security by Purchasing Voter-Verifiable Paper Systems

Marian K. Schneider: “We applaud this decision today to increase the integrity of Pennsylvania’s elections and its move to safeguard elections.”

The following is a statement from Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, formerly Deputy Secretary for Elections and Administration in the Pennsylvania Department of State, on Pennsylvania’s announcement that it will no longer purchase paperless DREs and that going forward all new voting machines must have a voter-verifiable paper ballot or paper record. For additional media inquires, please contact aurora@newheightscommunications.com 

“Pennsylvania is taking a critical step towards safeguarding elections by replacing its aging voting systems and restoring voters’ faith that their votes will be counted as cast. The only way to address the risk of software problems is to require a physical paper ballot that can be used to check the computer-generated votes.

Verified Voting Blog: Marian K. Schneider: It’s time to safeguard our elections

This oped was originally published in the York Dispatch on February 1, 2018.

An oversight in York County, Pennsylvania on the eve of last November’s Election Day questioned the rightful winner of the election, but thankfully the potential damage stopped there. Still, the discovery of a technical error — one that allowed voters to cast multiple votes for a candidate in races with cross-filed candidates — risked the integrity of the election. This could’ve been easily preventable with paper ballots.

Most Pennsylvania voters are using paperless electronic voting machines to cast their ballot. The problem is that these outdated machines — also known as direct recording electronic (DRE) systems —are unverifiable. DREs, or voting machines without paper ballot back-up, have been the source of controversy for years because of their inability to allow anyone to verify the results. Instilling confidence in election outcomes can only occur by replacing these systems with newer ones that provide a software independent record of voter intent and implementing statistically meaningful audits of those records.

We know there was foreign interference during the 2016 election cycle, and that similar acts to undermine faith in America’s democratic systems are a possibility. Security experts agree that safeguarding and protecting election systems is important and that no system is completely secure. That’s why security experts recommend ensuring that all computer-based systems, including voting machines are resilient, that is, they have the ability to identify a problem and recover from it. Replacing the outdated voting systems with resilient machines is imperative before the 2018 elections because, for more than 80 percent of Pennsylvania voters in 50 counties, no one has any way of knowing whether the paperless voting machines correctly captured voter intent.

Media Release: Verified Voting Says Paper Ballots and Post-Election Audits Can Safeguard our Elections as State and Local Election Officials Discuss Election Security

Marian K. Schneider: “Passing the bipartisan Security Elections Act will advance our nation’s efforts to protect and ensure trustworthy elections.”

The following is a statement from Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, regarding the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) summit held today in Washington, D.C. For additional media inquires, please contact aurora@newheightscommunications.com  

“As officials look to address the risks our elections face today, it is essential that voter-verified paper ballots and post-election audits are recognized as the best way – given current technology – to ensure that an attack on our voting systems can be detected and the outcome verified. With midterm elections quickly approaching, it’s time we also prepare to monitor, detect, respond and recover from these potential attacks. The good news is that we can, and Congress has a bill that goes a long way in doing so.

“The bipartisan Secure Elections Act, introduced late last month by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen, Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Martin Heinrich, (D-NM), aims to provide states with the resources needed to implement these safeguards. 

Media Release: Verified Voting Urges Congress to Pass the Secure Elections Act; Bipartisan Legislation Empowers States to Protect Themselves

Marian K. Schneider: “Passing the bipartisan Secure Elections Act will advance our nation’s efforts to protect and ensure trustworthy elections.”

The following is a statement from Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, on the Secure Elections Act, which was introduced by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC),Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen, Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Martin Heinrich,(D-NM) on December 21, 2017.

“The Secure Elections Act addresses the new reality that our election infrastructure must be protected as matter of national security. At a time when our democracy needs increased protection, Congress should fast-track the newly introduced Secure Elections Act to provide resources for states to safeguard our voting systems and ensure election infrastructure is resilient.

“This bipartisan legislation establishes a structured grant program that creates incentives for states to adopt good cyber hygiene measures in accordance with guidelines developed by an advisory panel of experts. Coupling grants to the states with effective guidelines on spending will ensure the money is used well and moves toward strengthening our elections. In addition, the bill improves the exchange of information about security threats among the different levels of government to allow timely response and action.

Media Release: Election Security Experts Urge Congress to Pass the Security Elections Act; Bipartisan Legislation Empowers States to Protect Themselves

Marian K. Schneider: “Passing the bipartisan Security Elections Act will advance our nation’s efforts to protect and ensure trustworthy elections.”

The following is a statement from Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, on the Secure Elections Act, which was introduced by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC),Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen, Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Martin Heinrich,(D-NM) on December 21, 2017. For additional media inquires, please contact aurora@newheightscommunications.com  

“The Secure Elections Act addresses the new reality that our election infrastructure must be protected as matter of national security. At a time when our democracy needs increased protection, Congress should fast-track the newly introduced Secure Elections Act to provide resources for states to safeguard our voting systems and ensure election infrastructure is resilient.

“This bipartisan legislation establishes a structured grant program that creates incentives for states to adopt good cyber hygiene measures in accordance with guidelines developed by an advisory panel of experts. Coupling grants to the states with effective guidelines on spending will ensure the money is used well and moves toward strengthening our elections. In addition, the bill improves the exchange of information about security threats among the different levels of government to allow timely response and action.

Verified Voting Blog: Testimony of Verified Voting to the Georgia House of Representatives House Science and Technology Committee

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Georgia’s voting machines need an update. The lifespan of voting machines has been estimated at 10-15 years.1 Purchased in 2002 Georgia’s voting machines are at the outside of that estimate. As voting systems age they are more susceptible to error, malfunction or security threats potentially losing or miscounting votes.

Georgia is one of only a handful of States that is still casting votes on entirely electronic voting systems, known as Direct Record Electronics (DREs). These machines record votes only in digital form; if the digital records are corrupted, either by benign error or malicious attack, there are no backup records and no way to know whether votes have been corrupted. When Georgia purchased these machines in 2002, the national trend was toward paperless touchscreen voting machines. Since then, however, most states moved away from paperless voting systems, driven by mounting research establishing these machines’ security flaws and some high profile and costly machine failures.2 Most of the nation has adopted voting systems that rely on a voter-marked paper ballot, an election safeguard recognized as essential by election officials and computer security experts alike.

A paper ballot provides a durable, physical record that is out of reach of a cyber attack and cannot be lost by a digital malfunction or programming error. Paper ballots can be used in a recount or to perform a post-election audit or check on the election results to help ensure the election outcome is correct. Today roughly 70% of voters in our nation mark a paper ballot which is counted by an electronic scanner.

Verified Voting Blog: Testimony of Verified Voting to the New York State Assembly Standing Committee on Election Law

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In 2016 the threat of cyber attacks on our elections from foreign entities became an alarming reality. We learned that an adversarial nation was targeting our election systems with the intent to disrupt and undermine the legitimacy of our free, democratic government. In the declassified report “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections” the U.S. Intelligence Community warned that “Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards.”1 Several months ago we learned that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contacted officials in twenty-one states to notify them that their election systems had been targeted by Russian hackers. When asked at a June hearing of the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence if we should expect continued cyber attacks on our election infrastructure, then FBI director James Comey stated emphatically, “[t]hey will be back.”2 The gravity of this threat cannot be overstated. It is critical that we take every precaution to protect our election systems.

The stealth, skill and sophistication of today’s state-level cyber attackers should not be underestimated. Cyber security experts have warned that attacks today continue to outpace our ability to defend against them. The unending list of high profile and well-defended enterprises that have fallen victim to cyber attacks3 demonstrates the impracticality of trying to defend any computer system absolutely. Further complicating the problem, our election offices are typically under-resourced and understaffed. Though the New York State Board of Elections currently has in place some of the more advanced cyber security and cyber hygiene requirements for election systems, we cannot expect our county election offices to defend against cyber attacks from a state-level attacker.

Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting Testimony for the New Jersey State Assembly Judiciary Committee

Verified Voting is a national non-partisan, not for profit research and advocacy organization founded by computer scientists and committed to safeguarding democracy in the digital age. We promote technology and policies that ensure auditable, accessible and resilient voting for all eligible citizens. We urge you to adopt the proposed amendments and vote “YES” on A-4619.

New Jersey is one of only a handful of states whose voters are still casting votes on entirely electronic voting systems, direct recording electronic (DREs). Because these systems record votes directly onto computer memory without any independent paper record of the vote, they are especially vulnerable to undetectable and uncorrectable errors in the vote count.

Numerous studies and security evaluations of DRE systems over the years have found that the DREs in use in New Jersey have insecurities making them vulnerable to undetectable manipulation and tampering.1 Because DRE systems prevent anyone from verifying that the electronic tally accurately reflects voter intent, many States have discontinued the use of electronic DRE voting systems in favor of paper ballots. In 2006 only 25% of voters nationwide cast their ballots on paper but in 2017 more than 70% of U.S. voters marked a paper ballot.2