Now is the best time in US history to vote. Yes, American elections are flawed. Voter disenfranchisement is mixed, gerrymanderingthe peculiarity of the electoral college and recent cases of ballot box fires. But the act of voting itself has been unfairly tarnished, especially by former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was fraudulent. This claim is particularly absurd as modern voting procedures are becoming more strong—and those who vote by mail or by machine in this year’s presidential election can, in fact, be more confident than ever that their votes will be counted accurately.
One reason for this confidence is the adoption of voting technology that combines the efficiency of a machine with the verifiability of a paper trail. It’s the result of a change that began two decades ago, after a fiasco involving system locks and punch-card scraps — Florida’s famous “hangers” — left the results of the 2000 election undecided for five weeks. Congress’s response, the Help America Vote Act of 2002, eliminated punch-card voting and the use of lever machines in federal elections. Most Americans now vote with optical scanners, which process selections marked on sheets of paper. In the 2020 presidential election, Georgia polls used hand-powered optical scanners; An audit of nearly five million votes cast in the state, the largest vote count in recent US history, confirmed President Joe Biden’s victory. The county’s error rates were 0.73 percent or less, and most had no change at all in their accounts.
About supporting science journalism
If you like this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism subscribe. By purchasing a subscription, you’re helping to ensure a future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas that shape our world.
While US voting machines are not completely tamper-proof, no machine is invulnerable, as a precaution against remote hacking, most do not connect to the Internet (potentially problematic exceptions aside from it). In a recent election security update, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, said the intelligence community has no evidence of adversaries attempting to compromise the physical US election infrastructure. Intervening in a meaningful way across the country’s diverse and decentralized systems would be essentially impossible, the ODNI update noted. Instead, foreign actors prefer the easier route of psychological influence, trying to sway voters or undermine electoral confidence. propaganda and disinformation.
“For many reasons, the potential vulnerability of individual voting machines does not translate into systemic vulnerability,” says the political scientist. Mark LindemanDirector of Policy and Strategy at Verified Voting, a nonprofit group that monitors election systems across the country. “Hackers didn’t go all out with the voting machines. There is a range of procedural safeguards to protect them.’ Physical votes also add reliability to the system because they are verifiable, auditable and countable. American scientific He spoke with Lindeman about why Americans, despite experiencing so much voting agitation, are in fact living in the golden age of voting.
(Following is an edited transcript of the interview.)
Verified Vote estimates that nearly 98.6% of registered voters live in voting jurisdictions have a paper trail of the form Why is this important?
It is twofold. Paper trail provides fail-safe. If something goes wrong with the systems — and what we’ve seen in some elections are machines counting votes incorrectly, never because of hacking, always because of a mistake in how they were set up — paper ballots have become available to correct those errors.
Perhaps it is to ensure the even greater value of paper ballots verified by voters and used by election officials in audits and counts. Instead of debating whether or not the machines counted the votes accurately, we can look at the evidence of the paper ballots and find out. We can move from abstract speculation about technology to observable reality.
Voting machines in the US are generally not connected to the Internet. In fact, Verified Voting has opposed the Internet voting proposals. Why is that?
We’re talking about paper ballots that can be verified by voters and used by election officials to verify counts. We see the transmission of electronic voting, any form of voting over the Internet, as a step forward since the advent of Verified Voting in recent years has made elections more secure than they were 20 years ago. The country has just now reached the point where almost everyone votes on verifiable paper ballots. Internet voting is the antithesis of that.
If someone claims that an internet election (or an election where many votes were transmitted electronically) was hacked, I don’t know how they can convince people otherwise.
If you are voting in this election, how confident are you that your vote will count?
I voted early here in New York State using a hand-marked paper ballot and a scanner. New York state has a 3 percent audit, and I am very confident that my vote will be counted accurately.
What is a 3 percent audit?
New York randomly selects 3 percent of the scanners used in the election and counts them manually to ensure those votes have been counted accurately. Most states conduct some form of post-election audit. The details vary, but having a percentage-based audit, as New York does, is the most common model.
Has there been a peak voting period before this? (A recent Pew Research Center survey of registered US voters found that one in four thinks the presidential election At least it will misfire.)
I don’t think there has ever been a better time to vote in the US. There was also a time when everyone voted on paper ballots, but the administration of the elections was, in fact, riddled with corruption. No one is really calling for a return to the old days Tammany Hall (laughs).
Paper ballots are not necessarily inherently secure. Paper is fragile. But the checks and balances that have been put in place around paper ballots have never worked more effectively in the US than they do now. Electoral administration is much more professional than 20 years ago. Election officials are better trained. They are more aware. It seems a little strange to talk about it as a golden age of elections amidst all the anxiety, but I see no other way to interpret the events.
What can we do to restore confidence in the American vote?
(He lets out a tired sigh.)
I felt it in my bones.
I am a child of enlightenment. I think reflecting on reality is the place to start. Part of that reality is the basic technology in place: that our votes are recorded on paper ballots; procedurally, that these paper ballots are protected; that in most states, they are used in audits to verify the counts.
Beyond that, a large majority of Americans actually do it trust their local election officials. In my experience, that trust is well-placed. The election officials I’ve worked with across the country are deeply focused on the mission of making elections work for their constituents. So I don’t know what it takes to convince people to appreciate the good around them, instead of raising fears about terrible things that could happen or morbid speculation. That may be above my pay grade.
If you could improve one thing about the mechanics of voting in America, what would it be?
We can do better than we are doing now in real accessible voting. I believe accessibility has been built into most voting systems on the market. If we focus more on accessibility from there, we can do better for a wider range of voters.
Can you give me an example of accessible voting?
Many states offer some form of touch-screen interface, which can be equipped with both (“pulse pedals,” large buttons that can be operated with feet, hands, or other body parts) and so-called sip and puff interfaces (devices). which work by breathing). All of these allow voters with various abilities and disabilities to interact with a voting machine. They can adjust the contrast; they can adjust the font size. And with audio interfaces, if you can’t see the vote, you can have the vote read to you.
These are all interfaces that provide the ability for a larger range of voters to independently mark and cast their ballots. And they are a huge improvement more than anything. But I also think that voters with disabilities can, in many cases, demonstrate that these interfaces do not work as well in practice as they are built to do in theory.
We’re in the early stages of accessibility, and I’d like to level it up.
