Lawmakers on the Assembly State and Local Government Committee heard once again just how good New Jersey’s election machine security is. “New Jersey was one of 12 states to receive a ‘D,’” said Danielle Root, a voting rights manager from the Center for American Progress. Root was one of several election experts to highlight a key deficiency: relying on touch screen election machines that leave no paper record of votes. “Although it’s good that New Jersey adheres to cybersecurity best practices related to voter registration systems, including training election officials and partnering with DHS [Department of Homeland Security] to perform vulnerability assessments on election infrastructure, the state, as the chairman mentioned earlier, continues to use paperless electronic voting machines,” said Root.
… Princeton University Professor Andrew Appel studies election machines across the country. He says most states have some sort of paper record of votes and have systems in place to randomly audit elections for accuracy. He says this is needed because computers can be programmed to cheat, and he demonstrated that he could write a program to do just that.
“Voting computers are hackable. Computers connected to the internet, even directly, can be vulnerable to hacking from the internet. Computers are always vulnerable to hacking by people who have physical access to them, even for a limited amount of time,” Appel said.
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