PBS NewsHour Reports on the Problems of Using Touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices

Lately the PBS NewsHour aired a phase that highlighted the weaknesses and dangers triggered through the use of computerized touchscreen voting machines to document vote choices on a paper poll – as an alternative of marking paper ballots with a pen, the commonest voting methodology within the nation. 

The phase featured Dr. J. Alex Halderman, a pc scientist and professor on the College of Michigan. Halderman is an skilled within the ongoing Curling v. Raffensperger litigation. (Curling v. Raffensperger was filed in 2017, doesn’t allege any election was wrongfully determined, and was not a part of any effort to overturn the 2020 election.) 

As an skilled within the case, Halderman examined the computerized touchscreen poll marking units (BMDs) utilized in Georgia and located a number of, important safety vulnerabilities that have been confirmed by the Division of Homeland Safety’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company. Each in-person voter in Georgia should use the computerized voting units to mark their vote selections that are recorded and counted from a QR code that can’t be deciphered by the voter. 

“Basically it’s an issue anytime you’re going to place a doubtlessly weak pc between the voter and the one information of their vote,”  Halderman informed the NewsHour.

Talking with NewsHour’s Miles O’Brien, Georgia’s chief working officer, Gabriel Sterling dismissed Halderman’s findings claiming that Halderman didn’t keep in mind the bodily safety protections, which Sterling claims would make it not possible to use the vulnerabilities. 

However actually, Halderman’s intensive, 95 web page skilled’s report examined how the machines are sometimes saved, sealed, secured, and deployed, then recognized methods an attacker might subvert current safeguards to compromise the touchscreen BMDs to undetectably change the QR codes, opposite to Sterling’s claims to the NewsHour. 

Moreover, because the phase famous, in 2021, unauthorized operatives, engaged on behalf of the Trump marketing campaign, had unfettered entry to the voting system in a south Georgia county for days, permitting them to repeat delicate proprietary voting system software program. “It is among the most notorious safety breaches in U.S. Election historical past,” mentioned Miles O’Brien. The breach was not uncovered by the Secretary of State or regulation enforcement, however by  the plaintiffs within the Curling litigation Coalition for Good Governance,  its co-plaintiffs, and attorneys at Morrison and Foerster. n.

The phase famous that the voting system vendor launched a software program replace it purports will eradicate the vulnerabilities Halderman recognized, however Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger informed the NewsHour the state is not going to replace the BMDs earlier than the election as a result of updating all 35,000 units used throughout the state will take months. 

The NewsHour didn’t tackle the truth that the aid sought by the Curling plaintiffs – switching to handmarked paper ballots counted by the identical scanners at the moment in use – would eradicate the 35,000 computerized touchscreen units, and consequently, finish all future labor intensive updates and programming. 

Free Speech For Folks helps the plaintiffs’ purpose to eradicate the mandated use of BMDs by all voters (whereas retaining accessible units for voters that want assistive expertise). Be taught extra about common use BMDs right here. 

The Curling v. Raffensperger swimsuit is in federal courtroom within the Northern District of Georgia. Docket quantity: 1:17-cv-02989-AT. Plaintiffs embody Donna Curling, Donna Value, Jeff Schoenberg  and Coalition for Good Governance. 

Watch the NewsHour report right here.