It’s all about security. Or rather, the perception of security. “Until security on the internet feels like something the people can trust … paper is the future,” said David B. Bjerke, director of elections and general registrar of voters of Falls Church, Virginia. Paper — or lack of it — was one of the reasons that several models of voting machines were suddenly decertified by Virginia’s State Board of Elections. The tipping point came over the summer, when hackers at the DEFCON gathering in Las Vegas demonstrated how they could compromise the security of direct recording electronic machines. “I understand why the Virginia State Board of Elections made their decision,” said Bjerke. “The security that was involved in these DREs, the direct recording electronic machines, hadn’t been updated since 2004. So, obviously, technology has increased since then. And the ability to hack equipment in general has increased. And so, without updating those security protocols, I understand why they wanted to make all DREs decertified.”
Falls Church, which has only about 10,000 registered voters, lucked out: It has already purchased new voting machines, to be delivered in January.
“We already had this in the plan,” said Bjerke. “There was no scrambling for money that had not been accounted for.” He says it was simply a matter of moving up the delivery date, which the vendor was able to do.
Full Article: Voting like it’s 1999: Va. jurisdictions to back up ballots on paper | WTOP.