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.
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[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,”
During the four-minute video, Alex Halderman demonstrates how to hack into electronic voting machines while holding a mock election at the University of Michigan. After students were asked to choose between their own university and rival Ohio State, Alex is able to manipulate the vote causing Ohio State to win.
The demonstration shows voting machines’ vulnerability and why using paper ballots and implementing widespread, statistically sound audits like RLA’s is needed to verify our vote.
MEDIA CONTACT: Aurora Matthews
Verified Voting is a national non-partisan, non-profit educational and advocacy organization committed to safeguarding elections in the digital age. Founded by computer scientists, 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.