Georgia's hacker-vulnerable touch-screen voting system is dangerously obsole

“We don’t know what’s happening in our elections because we can’t audit them. We need a complete overhaul of our system … This is an urgent situation.”

— Sara Henderson, executive director, Common Cause Georgia

There’s no evidence that Georgia’s touch-screen voting machines have ever been hacked before or during any election over the 16 years they have been in use.

But it’s more than possible there wouldn’t be any evidence even if they had. Because, as reported by Mark Niesse of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the machines do not make hard-copy records to verify vote totals.

Lawmakers and open-government advocacy organizations were already talking about the potential for problems even before the situation surfaced last year at Kennesaw State University’s Center for Elections Systems, where a security hole exposed the personal data of millions of Georgia voters — and went unrepaired for six months. Voter confidence didn’t exactly get a boost when the server’s data was later erased by KSU technicians.

Rep. Scot Turner, R-Holly Springs, has introduced a bill calling for the state to replace the touch-screen machines with paper ballots, which according to the Niesse story are used by about 70 percent of American voters.

The transition wouldn’t, needless to say, be cheap. Turner estimates the cost to the state at $25-35 million, mostly for the scanning technology to read the ballots.

“The most secure system in the world for conducting elections is pen or pencil and a piece of paper,” Turner told the AJC. “It’s the same type of Scantron technology we’ve been using since we were kids filling out standardized tests.”

It’s not a partisan issue: One of Turner’s co-sponsors is Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta, and the consensus on both sides of the aisle is that Georgia’s voting system is obsolete and vulnerable.

“The system we have right now is effectively a computer system from 2002,” Holcomb said. “How many of us are using phones from 2002? How many of us are using laptops from 2002? Not many people.”

Even the company that manufactured the computer technology for the touch screens doesn’t vouch for it: Microsoft no longer supports the Windows 2000 OS on which the voting system is based.

And last summer in Las Vegas — about the same time concern over the situation with the KSU server was coming to a head — a DefCon computer hacking conference “exposed security vulnerabilities in the type of voting machines used in Georgia that could allow them to be compromised,” the AJC reported, adding that Virginia election officials scrapped the touch-screen system soon thereafter.

Whether (and when) Georgia lawmakers approve the needed funding and start the transition process will become clearer as the legislative session moves along; Turner would like to see a new paper-based system in place in time for the 2020 elections.

The integrity of the voting process, and public faith in that integrity, is a foundational American value. This isn’t something that should be kicked down the road.

This story was originally published January 23, 2018 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Georgia's hacker-vulnerable touch-screen voting system is dangerously obsole."