Lawmakers turn timely attention to accuracy of Georgia’s voter tech
A lawsuit that calls into question the accuracy and integrity of past elections is working its way through the system. In the meantime, a bipartisan group of Georgia lawmakers is considering changes that might make such issues moot with regard to future ones.
For the last 15 years, Georgia has used touch-screen voting machines, most of which do not provide hard-copy records of vote counts. (The machines used in Muscogee County, as most local voters are aware, provide printed as well as electronic records of vote totals.)
“Critics of Georgia’s voting machines,” Associated Press reported Thursday, “have said they’re highly susceptible to being rigged by hackers in all-but-undetectable ways and that their votes can’t be reliably recounted. They’ve urged the state to review and replace the voting system.”
That criticism had been heard even before last summer, when a technician disclosed that a security breach in a central server at Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Systems — a hole that exposed voter databases, poll worker passwords and other sensitive information — had not been repaired six months after he had first discovered it and reported it to state authorities.
Election reform activists filed a class-action suit July 3 calling on the state to replace the touch-screen technology. Four days later, the Kennesaw State server was wiped clean for reasons and under authority still unclear, an action initially condemned and subsequently defended by the Georgia secretary of state.
How that all plays out will be determined in the courts. For now, AP reports, the House Science and Technology Committee is consulting with voter tech companies to consider the state’s options for avoiding such problems in the future.
The panel is headed by Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, who said lawmakers are “just trying to understand what options the state of Georgia has,” and they have set no timetable for upgrading the system. There is no urgency to replace the state’s voting machines in time for the 2018 midterms, he said, nor have committee members really settled on making a change at all: “In spite of criticism and innuendo, I think there’s been many elections where this system has proven itself,” Setzler told reporters.
One of Setzler’s fellow committee members, Rep. Scot Turner, R-Holly Springs, offered a different perspective: “I’m hopeful we will make a case that will create the urgency required for a change,” he said after a Thursday hearing.
Part of that urgency, it is reasonable to assume, is political: Republicans will almost certainly dominate in Georgia’s 2018 elections, particularly in top state offices; and with current election technology not only under years of critical scrutiny but now the subject of a lawsuit, it makes good political sense to clear away as much of that complication as possible before the next round of voting.
But it also makes good practical and ethical sense. A trustworthy electoral process that enjoys the confidence of the electorate is about as fundamental a civic necessity as there is.
One of the advisers at the Thursday committee hearing was Susan Greenhalgh of Verified Voting, an advisory group founded by computer scientists which AP identified as “a non-partisan, non-profit organization that pushes for measures to make elections accurate, transparent and verifiable.” (Greenhalgh is not affiliated with any of the for-profit voter tech companies also represented at the committee meeting.)
One of the virtues of hard-copy balloting, Greenhalgh told the panel — and this is so self-evident we tend to forget it — is that it’s accurate even when there’s a technical breakdown, including one as simple as a power outage. Among many options, she recommended one already in use in many other states: paper ballots that can be read by an electronic scanner, which would also have the advantage of lower cost as most polling places would need just one machine.
Revamping Georgia’s voting process in time for the 2018 elections might or might not be a long shot. Having a plan and some recommendations ready to present to the 2018 session of the General Assembly shouldn’t be.
This story was originally published December 1, 2017 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Lawmakers turn timely attention to accuracy of Georgia’s voter tech."