A New Voting System Promises Reliable Paper Records. Security Experts Warn It Can’t Be Trusted – By AJ Vicens (Mother Jones) / Jan 8 2020
A just-released study says over ninety percent of errors introduced by ballot marking devices go undetected.
As states and local voting jurisdictions around the country work to upgrade voting systems in the wake of the 2016 Russian election interference operations, most election security experts have urged the adoption of paper ballots.
While voting on paper might call to mind wielding a pencil or pen to fill a bubble, check a box, or complete an arrow, election officials in several states have purchased systems that use paper but where voters continue make selections on a touch-screen. These machines, known as ballot marking devices, or BMDs, then print out the voter’s completed, marked ballot to be tallied by optical scanners. The machine-produced ballots can be preserved, providing a physical record to verify a result or conduct a recount.
Opponents warn the machines perpetuate some of the same risks inherent to paperless systems.
In theory, voters can review the ballot printed by the machine and catch any discrepancy between their intentions and the paper record. But a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan based on a carefully designed mock-election found that the majority of voters don’t review their ballots before handing them over to be scanned, and that a shockingly low number of voters reported errors to poll workers, even though the researchers had programed the machines to deliberately introduce one on every ballot. Based on the experience, the researchers warn that “error detection and reporting rates are dangerously low,” indicating that not only would it usually go unnoticed if such machines, either through error or manipulation, printed mismarked ballots, but that the paper record they produced would fail to document any evidence of a discrepancy.
The study will likely add fuel to a contentious debate in the election security community over the technology. While backers of BMDs argue they can speed up voting, help people with disabilities vote confidentially and without assistance, and prevent the incomplete and stray marks that people commonly make using pens and pencils, opponents warn they perpetuate some of the same risks inherent to paperless systems while giving a false sense of confidence.
Continue to article: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/ballot-marking-devices-election-security/
