August 22, 2018

How to secure vote counts

From a statement by nine public interest groups including Common Cause and the Project on Government Oversight

There must be a requirement (or strong incentive) for electronic voting systems to incorporate a paper ballot (marked by hand or device) that is visible to the voter and retained for audits or recounts.  With equal importance, there must be a requirement (or strong incentive) for federal contests to be subject to manual post-election audits, in which people inspect a random sample of the paper ballots (by hand and not by device) and the number of ballots inspected is sufficient to establish high statistical confidence in the reported outcome.

The reasons for voter-verified paper ballots and manual post-election audits have been discussed at length, but it bears repeating that this combination of safeguards is the only practical defense that can reliably detect and correct cyberattacks against voting machines. This is not only our assessment; NIST researchers reached the same conclusion[1].  Voter-verified paper ballots provide evidence of voters’ intent that cannot be changed in a cyberattack, and manual post-election audits use that evidence to detect any faults in the computerized counting process and, if necessary, recover from those events.  Although other procedures and safeguards are important, only voter-verified paper ballots and manual audits provide robust assurance that elections outcomes cannot be manipulated in a cyberattack.

Both voter-verified paper ballots and manual post-election audits are essential components of this defense, and neither offers sufficient protection without the other. An electronic voting system that incorporates both provides a cost-effective, failsafe disaster-recovery plan that will bolster confidence in our democracy.

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