(AP) — In the rush to replace insecure, unreliable electronic voting machines after Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, state and local officials have scrambled to acquire more trustworthy equipment for November, when U.S. intelligence agencies fear even worse problems.
But instead of choosing simple, hand-marked paper ballots that are most resistant to tampering because paper cannot be hacked, many are opting for pricier technology that computer security experts consider almost as risky as earlier, discredited electronic systems.
Called ballot-marking devices, the machines have touchscreens for voting. Unlike touchscreen-only machines, they print out paper records that are scanned by optical readers. South Carolina voters will use them in Saturday's primary.
The most pricey solution available, they are at least twice as expensive as the hand-marked paper ballot option. They have been vigorously promoted by the three voting equipment vendors that control 88% of the U.S. market.
Some of the most popular ballot-marking machines, made by industry leaders Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems, register votes in bar codes that the human eye cannot decipher. That's a problem, researchers say: Voters could end up with printouts that accurately spell out the names of the candidates they picked, but because of a hack, the bar codes may not reflect those choices. Because the bar codes are what's tabulated, voters would never know that their ballots benefited another candidate.
Even on machines that do not use bar codes, voters may not notice if a hack or programming error mangles their choices. A University of Michigan study determined that only 7% of participants in a mock election notified poll workers when the names on their printed receipts did not match the candidates they voted for.
ES&S rejects those scenarios. Spokeswoman Katina Granger said the company's ballot-marking machines’ accuracy and security "have been proven through thousands of hours of testing and tens of thousands of successful elections." Dominion declined to comment for this story.
Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. voters will be using ballot-marking machines this year, compared with less than 2% in 2018, according to Verified Voting, which tracks voting technology.
Pivotal counties in the crucial states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina have bought ballot-marking machines. So have counties in much of Texas, as well as Los Angeles County and all of Georgia, Delaware and South Carolina. The machines’ certification has often been streamlined in the rush to get machines in place for presidential primaries.
Ballot-marking devices were not conceived as primary vote-casting tools but as accessible options for people with disabilities. Critics see them as vulnerable to hacking.
At last year's DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas, it took tinkerers at the “Voting Village” less than eight hours to hack two older ballot-marking devices.
Tampering aside, some of the newer ballot-marking machines have stumbled badly in actual votes. That happened most spectacularly in November when ES&S's top-of-the-line ExpressVote XL debuted in a Pennsylvania county.
Even without technical troubles, the new machines can lead to longer lines, reducing turnout. Voters need more time to cast ballots and the machine's high costs have prompted election officials to limit how many they purchase.