Category Archives: DRE

Judge upholds paperless voting in Georgia, but pressures for change

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A federal judge on Monday denied a request by Georgia voters to have the state refrain from using its paperless voting machines for the midterm elections and use paper ballots statewide. Plaintiffs in the ongoing case had asked for a preliminary injunction on the the use of direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines out of concern that they are easy to hack, since they do not produce a verifiable paper record for each vote. Judge Amy Totenberg of the Northern District of Georgia said in her 46-page opinion that the burden of implementing an entirely different voting system across the state in the few weeks before Election Day outweighed the immediate security concerns associated with DREs. Totenberg nonetheless criticized the state for letting it get to this point. The judge said that the defendants “have delayed in grappling with the heightened critical cybersecurity issues of our era posed for the State’s […]

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South Carolina voters sue state over paperless voting machines

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South Carolina voters are suing their state over its use of paperless voting machines amid worries that they are susceptible to hacking without detection. The complaint filed Tuesday seeks a declaration from the court that South Carolina has violated the plaintiffs’ fundamental right to have their votes counted and prevent the state from continuing to use the machines it currently has in place. The lawsuit largely resembles one that is ongoing in Georgia. With the midterm elections coming up in November, the lawsuit does not outline any short-term alternatives to using the state’s current machines. The plaintiffs in the Georgia lawsuit propose using provisional paper ballots that can be scanned with the machines the state uses for absentee ballots. The plaintiffs are Frank Heindel, a commodities trader and election security advocate, and Phil Leventis, a former senator in the state legislature who opposed the the state’s adoption of the machines […]

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Spooked by election hacking, states are moving to paper ballots

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Paper ballots may at first seem like an antiquated voting practice, but hacking fears are now pushing an increasing number of states toward a return to the basics. State legislatures and election directors are heeding warnings from Washington that hackers may tamper with electronic voting systems in the 2018 midterm elections. The U.S. intelligence community has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a campaign to interfere with the 2016 presidential election and that the Kremlin will try to do so again. On the national level, lawmakers have made several attempts to push legislation aiming to strengthen election cybersecurity through grants to upgrade equipment and to increase cooperation between the federal government and lower jurisdictions. So far, no such legislation has passed either house in Congress. Amid all this national attention, a number of states have started to act on their own bolster the integrity of elections they run. With these […]

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