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people: rule of the majority. To ensure a country run by the rule of the majority, it is essential to
have a state voting system that has its integrity tested and secure. This system is an integral part
of a democratic society and will allow the voices of the people to be heard. The United States,
often on the cutting edge, is currently lacking in this area. The major problems and possible
solutions, discussed hereinafter, include outdated voting machines, foreign interference, and
Outdated Machines
In 1869, Thomas Edison invented the United States’ first voting machine to count the
vote during the next congressional election, and over the last 150 years voting machines across
the world have become more efficient, digitized, and accessible (Arnold, 1999). The goal of
these machines remains the same, however; they are meant to provide a secure and accurate
mechanism for voters to cast their votes anonymously. In the U.S., voting machines currently
either use old-fashioned paper ballots, whether it’s a machine for marking ballots after casting a
vote on a screen, or a machine for speed-counting those ballots or store the vote in their
computer memory to be counted digitally. The U.S. currently faces a crisis in the form of
outdated machines that compromises the security and the accuracy of the votes cast or counted.
With voters in the U.S. turning out in record numbers during a time of increased polarization
across political lines, having voting machines and ballot scanners malfunction or be opened to
There are three major types of voting machines in circulation in the U.S. The first type of
voting machine is an optical or digital scanning device, which takes paper ballots and scans them
rapidly with either infrared (IR) scanning or through digital scanning; the second major type of
machine is called a direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine, which stores the vote
information in the machine’s memory after voters use the interface (typically a computer touch-
screen); the third is a ballot marking device (BMD), a machine similar to DREs which prints a
paper ballot that is either scanned or hand-counted (National Conference of State Legislature,
2018). There are a variety of voting machine models in use today. However, many states are
using machines that are over a decade old and have widely known vulnerabilities, a fact that
raise concerns about their reliability or accuracy. According to a report conducted by New York
University’s Brennan Center for Justice in March 2018, 31 states have admitted to requiring
upgrades to their voting machines and 45 states are using machines that are no longer
Current Concerns
Some primary concerns for some of these machines, specifically DRE voting machines,
are that they have widely known vulnerabilities, do not produce a paper record of votes cast, and
that several states still currently use an AccuVote TS model, a model that was widely introduced
back in 2006 (Schulberg, 2017). While there are dozens of states that have counties that
currently use machines that don’t provide a paper trail, many use mail-in ballots and ballots that
are printed out from BMDs. To tally these votes quickly and efficiently, scanning machines are
implemented. However, in more than half of the states in the U.S., the ES&S 650 high-speed
ballot-counting machine is still in use despite security problems detailed in a report back from
2007 and that ES&S stopped manufacturing this model in 2008 (McMillan & Volz, 2018).
SECURITY OF STATES’ VOTING SYSTEMS 4
Despite reports of voters waiting in lines for hours on end due to broken machines, voting
machines switching candidate selections, and even children proving they can hack into the
machines, upgrading or replacing voting machines across the entire country has been a glacial
process. Thankfully for U.S. voters, there are several ways to directly address this issue.
Upgrading Machines. Many states have begun the process of accepting funds from the
Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grants and several have already planned to utilize those funds,
which range from $3 million to $34 million to replace their outdated voting equipment (Funding
Elections Technology, 2019). With millions of dollars being spent on new voting machines, it
will be imperative that adequate security is put in place to ensure that these new machines are up
to the task of securing those states’ elections. Unfortunately, many politicians that help oversee
election security have provided very little support for the idea that U.S. elections are at risk from
Mail-in Ballots. Washington, Oregon, and Colorado all utilize mail-in ballots for all
their elections. These states use a process which provides easy and early voting for all voters in
those states and provides special, secure envelopes to use, resulting in neither any proven cases
nor serious allegations of voter fraud using this system (Roberts, 2017). This process allows for
a reduction in the surface area for cyber-attacks by limiting machines to the sole purpose of
counting paper ballots. Due to political differences, there are opposers to this method of voting
that cite concerns around voters being forced to submit a specific vote under duress as well as
Investing in Audits and Security Processes. The most comprehensive way to handle
this issue would be to overhaul the entire process that the U.S. goes through for all elections.
SECURITY OF STATES’ VOTING SYSTEMS 5
The first step would be to invest heavily into the testing of all voting machines to ensure they
meet a specific standard before they can be used. The next would be to ensure that every vote
has a paper trail that can be securely audited and accounted for. The final step would be a multi-
phase auditing procedure that checks paper ballot results against machine results, a mandatory
post-election audit, as well as an audit of the procedures that covers the ballot accounting and
reconciliation process (Election Security | Cybersecurity: What Legislators (and Others) Need to
Know, 2019). The downside to this method is the length of time and resources that would be
required to implement these procedures in all counties in all states in the U.S.
Foreign Interference
This might not be a surprising fact but there is a long history of Russians directing its
intelligence to interfere with the U.S. Presidential elections. There are two methods that they
Disinformation
A popular method that the Russians used to interfere with the U.S. 2016 election is called
“disinformation.” This information manipulation is the fabrication of news content with the
purpose of deceiving other people. They took advantage of major social media platforms to
target U.S. citizens, especially African Americans (Lucas, 2018). 30 Facebook pages, fake
accounts, and knockoff accounts like “Black Matters”, were created to depress the black vote for
a presidential candidate (Cobb, 2018). Another of their reasons for doing so was to ignite racial
violence in the U.S. The most recent case is that they tried repeating messages of police officers’
violence to discourage the targeted group of people from voting. Some of the messages were
SECURITY OF STATES’ VOTING SYSTEMS 6
aimed at African Americans, people whose are related to a crime groups, as well as people that
Identity Falsification
establishment of a fake online identity, either by an individual or a group, which is used for
false-front interaction with target audiences.” This interference method has a variety of forms
2019). They often made fraudulent accounts and posted pictures with the message like, “Police
start clearing the streets of rioting Anti-Trump protesters! It’s high time!” Their intention was to
act as a U.S. organization and their post seemed to criticize Hillary Clinton (Parlapiano & Lee,
2018). It’s understandable to suspect that the other candidates are behind all of this; especially
Donald J. Trump, who won the election against Hillary Clinton, since these fake accounts
seemed to only aim at her. However, that there is insufficient evidence to prove the Trump
campaign was involved with the Russia intelligence attack according to the Muller report.
A recent suggestion for securing states’ voting systems is the use of Blockchain based
voting. Blockchain is a type of database that is shared across several computers in a network
called nodes. Records that are being sent from a node are checked for validity through digital
signatures. If the record is valid it will be added to a block. Each block has a unique hash, and
the hash from the previous block to make a chain. The hashes connect blocks in a specific order,
so that if any changes occur it can be tracked. New changes will generate a new hash that has to
be verified and the next block must record the changes with a newly generated hash. Once a
SECURITY OF STATES’ VOTING SYSTEMS 7
record is added to a block in a chain, it is extremely difficult to alter (Murray, 2018). If a hacker
were to break into a Blockchain, that hacker would have to recalculate the hash in the next block
in order to restore the chain since their computer is not a verified node that can generate a valid
hash. This recalculation of hashes takes an enormous amount of computer power currently, so
hacking a Blockchain is unlikely once the record is added to the block in a chain (Murray, 2018).
However, it is possible to either alter a record in transit to the block, since the record is not
encrypted while transit, or to alter the record before it is sent to the block through malware on a
Blockchain Voting. Using Blockchain for election voting is being looked at due to some
of the advantages is has over our current voting system. Some of the advantages of Blockchain
voting are voters can verify that their vote was cast as they intended it, tampering with a block
can be detected, and election officials and the public can confirm voting results stored on the
removing voting extremely difficult to hack versus a centralized database that is easier to hack
and change voting results (Gazdecki, 2018). Blockchain voting makes recounting votes
unnecessary and voter fraud is also minimized which would help build trust in election systems
(Shankland, 2018). Blockchain voting would make it easier for soldiers stationed overseas,
reducing or eliminating the need to wait for absentee ballots from them. Elections would wrap
up much faster and candidates would know if they won or lost an election by the end of the
voting time frame. West Virginia used Blockchain voting for the 2018 midterms and reported
that it was successful. Estonia and Sierra Leone also ran Blockchain voting in 2018 successfully
(Shankland, 2018). Other countries such as Japan and Thailand are looking to move to
Risks Using Blockchain Voting. Blockchain voting is not without risks. It is still subject
to human error that can lead to vulnerabilities, insider threats, or even backend technical flaws
that can be exploited by hackers. The Blockchain itself is not at risk, but the backend of the
Blockchain application vendor. For example, if a voter uses their cellphone to vote through an
app, then there could be a flaw that is exploited through poor coding, testing and maintenance.
Malware could infect that voter’s cellphone without them knowing it and would allow for
an attacker to alter the vote right before it is sent, all without the voter knowing it. An altered
report for the unsuspecting voter can be shown so that they remain ignorant of the change to their
vote. With so many apps infected with Malware in Google Play recently, this is not a scenario
that is farfetched. Since a record in transit is not encrypted, there is no way for the record to be
protected and no way to ensure that the voters’ selections will be untampered with when it
arrives to the Blockchain. There is also voter coercion to think about since it makes it easier to
pressure voters to vote a certain way as there is a lack of anonymity (Martel, 2018).
Securing Election Voting. Blockchain technology is still new and is continually being
improved as time goes by. Using a new technology that has glaring flaws is a risk that we need
voting system is not fixing the bottom-line issue; it is just kicking the can down the road. There
is no way to ensure the voters’ computer or cellphone is not infected with malware or up to date
on its security patches. Without using encryption to protect the record in transit, there is no way
to ensure that record has not been tampered with (Shankland, 2018).
should look to improve voting systems that are currently in use. Funding election security
properly by hiring more cyber security professionals to maintain servers and firewalls and to
SECURITY OF STATES’ VOTING SYSTEMS 9
patch vulnerabilities would be a good start in protecting our elections. Purchasing updated
election equipment with current operating systems and properly retiring old election systems
Using a chain of custody like law enforcement use when working on election equipment
and destroying hard drives through approved DoD methods before election equipment surpluses
would also be a needed step to secure elections. Making sure there is a paper receipt for each
vote as it is cast to verify votes, random vote audit sampling, and not using the same server to
post election results that voter registrations are on is another step to secure elections. Limiting
access to physical network and server equipment to vendors that have passed a background
check and continually training election staff on security best practices would also be helpful in
securing our elections. None of these steps include using Blockchain voting, that technology
Most people do not understand how Blockchain even works, it can cause confusion for
some people and a seed of doubt on the validity of elections an emerge from this confusion.
Election results can be challenged as invalid by a candidate if our elections have no trust in it by
the voters. Blockchain voting has promise in the future but as it stands currently it is not secure
Conclusion
Due to the areas just discussed and recent elections, it is evident that the U.S. needs a
secure voting system. If we don’t take responsibility for our voting systems, we risk losing our
rights, and most importantly our voice. The U.S. voting system is current vulnerable in many
ways. A large swath of states use outdated machines that are susceptible to malfunction and
tampering, the electorate is being bombarded with foreign interference meant to influence their
vote and to sow discord, and secure technologies that are being explored to replace our voting
mechanisms are in their infancy. Without a secure and trustworthy democracy, we risk putting
our lives in the hands of “one” not “the many–the people”. Society, officials, and HAVA all
working together to address these issues, through either revamping and replacing voting
machines or overhauling the entire process which voters cast their votes, will be needed to begin
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