America Won’t Give Up Its Hackable Wireless Voting Machines
- Connecting to internet, even briefly, could pose hacking risk
- Convenience, accessibility sometimes trump security concerns
An electronic voting machine sits in a privacy booth at a polling location in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 24, 2018.
Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/BloombergAfter Russian hackers made extensive efforts to infiltrate the American voting apparatus in 2016, some states moved to restrict internet access to their vote-counting systems. Colorado got rid of barcodes used to electronically read ballots. California tightened its rules for electronic voting machines that can go online. Ohio bought new voting machines that deliberately excluded wireless capabilities.
Michigan went in a different direction, authorizing as much as $82 million for machines that rely on wireless modems to connect to the internet. State officials justified the move by saying it is the best way to satisfy an impatient public that craves instantaneous results, even if they’re unofficial.