Why America is using glitchy electronic voting machines

It’s been 18 years and several thousand lifetimes since the contested Bush-Gore presidential elections of 2000. Yet “hanging chads” are still haunting us — but not in the way you might think.

Since states began introducing electronic voting machines and other technology in the voting process, digitizing various aspects of voting has been a boon for democracy in many ways. Online voter registration has supercharged get-out-the-vote efforts. ID scanning at check-ins helps reduce lines. And, of course, ballots submitted digitally allow for near instantaneous returns.

But on Tuesday, there were reports in states across the country that problems with electronic voting machines were causing massive delays.

“There are about a dozen states in which problems have been reported, specifically with electronic voting systems,” said Marian Schneider, president of the elections integrity organization Verified Voting. “The problems we’re seeing are diffuse. They don’t seem to be systemic. But in the localities that they’re happening, they’re impactful.”

Experts have also found that electronic voting is incredibly vulnerable to hacking. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia attempted to penetrate the voting systems of 21 states in 2016, and were successful in at least one (Illinois). 

It also turns out that the recommended way people should vote is with a paper ballot that allows voters to check that they’re casting the ballot the way they intended. That’s known as a “voter-verified paper audit trail” (VVPAT). It means that the most secure and accurate way to vote is through leaving an analog record.

“We need an election system that is resilient to the threats,” voting security expert Richard Schneier writes. “And for many parts of the system, that means paper.”

So why did we turn to electronic voting in the first place? 

Testing the system

Voter suppression is a major concern this election. But technical glitches are also stopping people from voting. 

In states including New York, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, malfunctioning voting computers caused problems at the polls. Old computers that broke or wouldn’t start up caused hours-long lines and delays. In South Carolina, calibration issues caused discrepancies between what people intended to select and what they ended up selecting. Some Texas ballots selected the candidate of the opposite party than the voter intended.

“What we’re seeing now across the country are technical issues,” Maurice Turner, the senior technologist of the Center for Democracy & Technology, said. “The strain of using a higher than expected voter turnout, with the combination of old machines that shouldn’t be in service, means it doesn’t look like there’s any sort of coordinated or malicious attempt to interfere. But we’re having machines that are breaking down and can’t handle the voter turnout.”

However, the fact that these are technical problems doesn’t mean they’re not a form of voter suppression. Many of the problems today were caused by obsolete machines. Turner explained that states have not paid to keep their voting equipment up to date. In New York, the Republican-controlled state assembly has refused to pass elections reform legislation or budget for maintenance. The problems today were technical, yes. But the root cause came from problems with how our government has approached — and funded — elections since the year 2000.

How did we get here?

In the 2000 presidential election, Florida ballots with punch tabs that weren’t all the way punched — aka “hanging chads” — caused a start-and-stop election recount and dramatic legal challenges. Essentially, manual voting errors threw the results of the presidential election into disarray. 

In response, Congress passed a bill that called for the modernization of voting processes and allocated funding to states to buy new voting technology.

“Where we are today is directly traceable to the ‘Help America Vote Act,’ the law that was enacted after the 2000 presidential election, and the hanging chad fiasco,” Verified Voting’s Schneider said. “The intentions were, let’s modernize, let’s move to the 20th century, even though we were in the 21st. And try to get something better.”

Of course, the impulse to digitize voting also came with the deeper integration of technology into everyday life, as well as with the expectations of the media and the public, who wanted instantaneous returns. But the adoption of electric voting also came from the idealized position the tech industry held at the time.

“In keeping with American tradition, methodology, and values, we thought that technology was the answer,” Herb Lin, an expert and Stanford University senior research scholar in cyberpolicy and security, said. “There’s no question that we’re sacrificing accuracy for speed.”

Lin said that in the wake of the dot-com boom, there was a huge push to rapidly develop and deploy technology in public affairs. He said that people believed in the promise of tech companies to solve the “hanging chad” problem. Plus, there was a lot of money at stake: the federal government allocated billions in contracts. So governments forged ahead with integrating tech into voting, despite the warnings of researchers like Lin to slow down. 

Another problem with the “gold rush” Lin spoke of was that it was a one-time infusion of cash, not a financially backed-up blueprint for a modern voting system. Usually, it’s up to states to keep their election infrastructure functioning, not the federal government. Congress allocated more money in 2018 to address security concerns, after the way that Russians sought to influence the election through voter hacking came to light. But that funding was also a one and done event.

“If states are just waiting on these inconsistent amounts of funding coming from the federal government once a decade, they’re not going to be able to replace their equipment as much as they need to,” Turner said.

Fear of repeating the Florida election disaster, the impulse to modernize, and faith in technology caused the U.S. switch from manual voting to digital without fully assessing the risks, rewards, or maintenance needs (and costs). That attitude resulted in an election system that states either cannot afford or don’t care enough to keep in good condition. This has resulted in the long lines and frustration that voters have experienced in 2018. 

“Our election administration is woefully underfunded,” said Schneider. “When we have problems on election day, you can trace it right back to resources.”

A better way?

Despite the endemic problem of underfunded elections, experts have agreed on some best practices to safeguard voting. And it is deliciously low-tech.

“We have to have the ability to monitor our systems to detect if something has gone wrong, and to respond to it,” Schneider said. “That’s what a paper voting system is for.”

The best practice for voting to ensure a secure and accurate election is with a voter-verified paper ballot. Whether people vote with an electronic machine or with a machine-scannable paper ballot, there needs to be a paper record of the vote (a VVPAT) where voters can read who they voted for. 

Paper ballots are secure because they’re not hackable. Having voters verify them ensures their accuracy. And having a physical record on hand means that, in close elections or disputes, there is a dependable master record available. 

“Sometimes technology has gotten ahead of us,” Schneider said. “We need to leverage what technology brings, but we need to do it in a responsible way, so we can check on it, because whether we like it or not, technology sometimes fails.”

Moving forward without turning back

In terms of scale, voting in America is an entirely different affair today than it was even half a century ago. 

“Voter turnout is what really pushed jurisdictions to start using more electronic equipment throughout the election process,” Turner said. “The paper process did not scale, but moving it to an electronic process allowed people to have access to registration.”

Recent elections have shown that participation in elections is the linchpin of our democracy, and evidence mounts that technology is helping to turn out the vote. The public also expects voting to keep pace with the role technology plays in other parts of their lives, Turner said. And let’s be honest— who isn’t eager for election night returns?

“Removing aspects of electronic technology from our electoral process now wouldn’t scale with the number of people that we have voting,” Turner said.

From registration to voting to counting, technology in elections is likely here to stay. But it’s important that governments put efforts in place to produce VVPATs, to proactively audit, and to keep infrastructure up to date.  

For example, Turner recommends “risk limiting audits,” which use samples from every single election to audit the results. The fact that it’s only a representative sample makes it doable, but its existence serves as both a check on technology and a deterrent for bad actors that would seek to influence the elections.

Voting machines and counting systems themselves also need to be more transparent. Most of these are run by private companies. Schneider and Turner both think making these platforms open source would make elections more secure. Right now, auditors are limited in the way they can evaluate electronic voting, because the machines and counting systems contain proprietary technology. But if independent auditors were able to become familiar with voting hardware and software, they would be able to detect bugs and breaches. 

Ultimately, voters and the government need to learn to love the paper trail. 

“A voter verified paper trail is absolutely necessary for any voting machine that we have,” Turner said. “Voters have a way to review their ballot. Because once it’s cast, there’s no going back.”