When it comes to election interference in the 2018 midterms, critics say Georgia is ripe for the picking. The state uses dubious electronic voting machines that offer no paper backup so as to detect foul play, and have been shown to be easily penetrated. “These are old school voting systems. I call them old school because they are one of the few systems in the country that still don’t have a paper trail on them,” freelance journalist Kim Zetter told Grant Burningham, host of Yahoo News’ “Bots & Ballots” podcast. “So these are what are called direct recording electronic [DRE] machines. They’re touch screen machines. They were made initially by Diebold, and Diebold, if you’ll recall, had a lot of bad publicity back in 2004, 2005, when the source code for their touchscreen machines was exposed online, and researchers looked at it and found a lot of problems.”
Zetter, the author of “Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon,” has spent years studying system vulnerabilities, and she sees Georgia as a prime target for those seeking to disrupt U.S. elections. According to the New Yorker, Georgia is “one of only five states that uses voting machines that create no paper record.”
“As other states realized the security problems with machines, particularly DREs, they passed legislation that required paper trails to be added to the machines,” Zetter said. “Georgia has very stubbornly resisted that.”
Full Article: Georgia under fire over voting machines.