Eric Geller
Eric Geller @ericgeller
BREAKING: Virginia election office asks state board to decertify insecure touchscreen voting machines:
www.politico.com/story/2017/09/08/virginia-election-machines-hacking-target-242492
Cybersecurity experts consider these touchscreen devices — known as direct-recording electronic, or DRE, voting machines — to be dangerous because they do not produce paper records of votes that can be compared with their electronic tallies, thus making it impossible to detect tampering. External attachments can create paper backups, but Virginia’s machines lack them.
Cortés told the board that in a security review of the machines prepared for the election office, Virginia’s IT agency concluded that “the potential for loss of vote is significant” because of the lack of paper audit trails.
Twenty-two Virginia voting localities — including counties and independent cities — use the machines, according to Cortés’ memo.
“Those remaining localities really need to switch to a system where we have some sort of backup that can be used in case there’s any question,” Cortés told POLITICO in an interview.
[rest of thread mobile.twitter.com/ericgeller/status/906199587509198848 ]
Matt Scharfstein🇺🇸
Matt Scharfstein🇺🇸 @MattAsherS
This is something you are going to hear more about. The voting machines aren't secure & some rigging likely occurred in '16.