Why US voting machines look like antiques
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Heading into today’s election, you’ve likely heard a litany of stories about how our voting machines are easily hacked, breaking down often or are just plain old.
What’s the deal? Why is it that the US can’t seem to get its voting machines in order? Better yet, why are we making this hugely important decision using the same fill-in-the-bubble method you used to take your your high school history test instead of voting on super high-tech tablets, or at least over the internet?
It turns out there a couple of reasons for all of the above. The biggest of them all, though, is cold hard cash. But before we get to that, a quick history lesson is in order.
See, long before the age of smartphones and tablets, way back in the year 2000, voters had some serious problems when George W. Bush was running against Al Gore. At that time, voters in some US states used punch-card ballots. Unfortunately, it turns out, that wasn’t the best way to cast a vote, especially if you lived in Florida.
That’s because a large number of ballots in the Sunshine State were improperly punched, making them harder to tally. The end result: recounts, lawsuits and the Supreme Court ruling in favor of George W. Bush.
After that, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), an initiative that provided billions of dollars to states in order to help them upgrade their voting systems between about 2002 and 2005. Sounds good, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong with hastily buying machines that handle the most important election in the free world?
It turns out a lot, actually. The machines, which were designed with touch screens or dials, ended up being incredibly easy to manipulate. In fact, some were so poorly protected that researchers cracked them in under a minute. That’s not exactly good news.
So the states replaced them, right? Well, yes, but it’s not quite that simple. See, because there was no HAVA money for the states anymore, individual counties had to foot the bill for newer, more secure machines. Those new machines, by the way, included paper ballots and scanners. So we essentially went from a low-tech option to a high-ish-tech option, back to a low-tech option.
As of now, between 75% and 80% of the US has access to new voting machines, from about 2007 and later. But that still leaves between 20% and 25% stuck with those old machines from between 2002 and 2005. Those older machines use replacement parts that are harder to find since they’re not exactly the pinnacles of technological progress.
That’s not to say new machines don’t break down. In fact, there have already been scattered reports of scanners unable to scan ballots today.
“So if voting machines are so finicky, why don’t we just vote online?” you ask. Because, well, it’s the internet. And if you had reservations about your local voting machine’s security, the very prospect of voting online should scare the hell out of you.
Here’s the thing: There is no such thing as a hack-proof computer. You’re probably reading this on a machine that’s got at least 12 different types of spyware installed on it already. That’s clearly an exaggeration, but you get the point. Voting over the internet is about as close to begging for hackers to manipulate the election as you can get.
But couldn’t we just go back and check the votes to make sure they’re accurate like credit card companies check your balance when you suspect someone’s stolen your account? Not exactly. The problem with that kind of system is that it creates a repository of the votes each person casts, which goes against the very idea of secret balloting we use in the US.
If there’s one good thing about the current machines we use, even those older ones, it’s that they aren’t connected to the internet, so they can’t be remotely hacked.
So there you have it. The reasons we don’t have super cool voting machines comes down to money, poor planning and security. But regardless of the machine you use today, you should still get out and use one.
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Email Daniel at [email protected]; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.