With Election Day rapidly approaching, poll workers in roughly a dozen localities all over the Commonwealth, including bigger cities like Norfolk and small ones like Hopewell, frantically train on brand new voting machines. On September 8, the Virginia Board of Elections voted to immediately de-certify all paper-less voting machines in the state. Those were the machines that allowed voters to vote by touching the screen. “We’ve had concerns in Virginia about the paper-less equipment for a while, and we’ve been kind of on a path to replacing them state-wide,” Edgardo Cortes, the state Commissioner of Elections, said.
Cortes said a hackers conference in Las Vegas this summer prompted the de-certification after it showcased vulnerabilities in some of the machines still in use in the Commonwealth.
“What we found is there was a rush to produce a lot of this equipment so a lot of these security concerns some of these other things weren’t really front and center in the development of that equipment,” Cortes said.
Hopewell’s General Registrar Pamela Clark said she promptly got rid of the old machines and ordered new ones. “They are gone. I don’t have room,” Clark said.
Full Article: Localities scramble to get paper ballot voting machines in time for Election Day | WTVR.com.