We have learned the hard way over the last few years. The electronic voting systems are vulnerable. Full stop. Let us count some of the ways.
Risks to our voting systems—the system is abusable
· Third party control of our elections—Corporations (ES&S, SCYTL) non-profits (ERIC), the state and the Federal government (the feds are monitoring our machines continually through Albert sensors); in fact, our officials have limited access to the system as they can’t fully access the machines or the source codes
· Early voting provides advanced data to potential bad actors
· Strong potential for internet connectivity/infiltration/hacking—can also be done via undetectable means via cell modem, coding or flash drive
· Dirty voter rolls/no true signature verification and poor chain of custody for absentee ballots and in person ballots for that matter
· Components manufactured overseas (China/Taiwan could contain malware)
These are just a few of the risks and we have witnessed abuse of the mail in/absentee ballots across the nation, issues with reconciling votes in GA, and also Epoll book injections in Texas. Vote-flipping from one candidate to another was also present in SC (2022 and 2023) as well as PA (2023) . Multiple people have recently been charged with election tampering.
There needs to be a better way, a re-engineering of the process. Yet when the people state that they have lost confidence in the system and wish to utilize hand-marked, hand-counted ballots our legislators seem apoplectic. Well, they did spend over $51 M in capital on this ES&S system that is used across the state. But if you had spent that money on a faulty car that was a lemon and had issues that were life-threatening and were afraid to drive it due to the risk, wouldn’t you get rid of the car? Wouldn’t you want to protect your family?
The resistance in hand-counting goes beyond the sunk cost of the machines. The push back is as follows:
Argument 1: It takes too long!
Counterpoint: most counties that hand-count can finish counting in the same day and the tests we have witnessed have resulted in about 130 ballots counted per hour for a 4-person team. In a precinct of 1500 (our legislative maximum here in SC) and a turnout of 70% which is high it would take 2 teams (8 people) about 4 hours to count the resultant 1000 ballots. Many European counties use hand marked paper ballots.
Argument 2: It isn’t accurate—there are errors.
Counterpoint: We use hand counts to verify the machines currently so we must think they are accurate. Furthermore, hand counts are able to find errors more readily. Machines can miss errors and that disenfranchises some voters.
Argument 3: We won’t be able to find/hire people to do the hand counting
Counterpoint: It only requires say 2-3 teams per precinct or possibly up to 12 people. Many people would volunteer for that and if not, you could pay them well. College students would be happy to make say $30/hr. and if you had a hard time recruiting you could utilize a system similar to the jury poll system. As it is quite a few people are needed via the current system to work the polls as well as set up etc.
Argument 4: It isn’t transparent or verifiable
Counterpoint: you can use a video to tape or live feed the process to preserve the info so that it can be verified later via a replay. This would make auditing simple. You could even engage high school kids to verify the tape afterward. There is no personal information on the ballots so there should be no reason to not be able to take a video of all the ballots after they are cast. The secrecy of ballots is an issue while casting since the voter is still not separated from their ballot. Once the ballot is cast it is no longer secret. Our constitution states that the count shall be public. This would ensure we are complying with our constitution.
Finally, the cost savings would be considerable as you wouldn’t need to maintain, store, transport machines and other equipment.
The movement of voters in SC to go to a more transparent, verifiable, accurate, and trustworthy system is growing yet our legislators seem tone deaf. To quote a former legislator, “these legislators speak of these machines like their members of their family.”
“The introduction of cold, computerized, machines into this arrangement is intuitively unsettling. We have no “relationship” with these things. They take no oaths of allegiance to us. They can’t sit in a jail cell if they defraud us. These computers, with their complexities, their secret vote counts, their private allegiance to their programmers, their potential for insidious tricks, come between us and our community.”
Why do YOU think the legislators are not listening to the people? What are they trying to protect?
Please comment below. And contact your legislators today and tell them. THE PEOPLE PREFER PAPER!
Let’s make SC the model for true election integrity.
