This is the second article in a three-part series on Election Security.
LACAG and other Louisiana advocacy organizations, including Citizens For Election Integrity, We The People Northwest Louisiana, We The People Bayou Community, Convention of States, Louisiana Power Coalition, Louisiana Republican Assembly, Women’s Republican Club of New Orleans, and numerous others have been persistently raising the alarm about the acute vulnerabilities of ALL computer-based voting systems, including and especially Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs).
The best cyber security experts in the world have recommended outlawing their universal use once and for all. Alex J. Halderman, arguably the world’s foremost expert on election security, told the Louisiana Voting System Commission that BMDs have serious vulnerabilities that enable highly sophisticated cyber hackers to remotely access the voting machines and switch votes from one candidate to another:
“Universal use of BMDs is a major security challenge because if they are hacked they can misprint or alter votes. They are a large, attractive target to hackers, making attacks more likely.” Halderman added that “The attackers that I worry about are the attackers like foreign governments, and very sophisticated criminal gangs, the ones we read about in the newspapers who commit cyber fraud and manipulation… foreign governments have attempted to penetrate these machines and we have every reason to believe they will in the future.”
Halderman went on to say that “BMDs can be hacked without being detected.” This reality is stunning, and should alarm every voter in America, regardless of political persuasion.
None of this is lost on President Trump, who has emphatically urged an all-paper ballot system.
In his recent address to the nation’s governors, including our own, Trump reiterated his position in crystal clear terms.
He emphasized the importance of four things in order to fully secure our elections: same day voting, voter ID, proof of citizenship, and paper ballots. Regarding paper ballots Trump said the following:
“If you went to paper ballots in your voting, and I would hope that every Republican (state) would… it costs exactly 8% of what the machines cost… and paper is very sophisticated today. It’s called watermark. It’s impossible to copy, impossible to cheat…You would save tens of millions of dollars, and you would have a much safer election…The most secure way that you can secure an election, and probably the fastest… is paper ballots. If you really believe that computers work, which they don’t, if you want to save a lot of money, all you have to do is go to paper ballots.” (Emphasis added).
Clearly, President Trump is not calling for computer voting with a “paper component” generated by a hackable machine (BMD), but an all-paper ballot voting system, both because it is far more secure and far less expensive. Any confusion about where President Trump stands on this is willful.
The President’s position is at odds with that of Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry, who remains insistent upon investing hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars in new voting machines.
In a recent interview with BRProud News, Landry repeated the hackneyed narrative that Louisiana needs new “machines” with a “paper component” for the voter to review for accuracy.
There are two fatal problems with the “paper component” approach. First, most voters do not review BMD- printed ballots, and those who do often fail to notice when the printed vote, i.e. “paper component” is not what they expressed on the touchscreen.
Secondly, even if the “paper component” accurately reflects the intent of the voter, there is no guarantee that the vote cannot be manipulated inside of the voting machine where the vote is recorded.
BMDs are subject to hacking, bugs, and misconfiguration of the software that prints the marked ballots.
There is simply no way to deter, contain, or correct computer hacking in BMDs. And, importantly, there is no way to determine whether manipulation occurred inside of the machine.
Why? Because the software is “proprietary”, and only the manufacturer of the machine is allowed access to it.
Let that sink in. American citizens have a fundamental constitutional right to know that their vote is accurate and secure, yet nobody except the vendor who programmed the machine and designed the software is legally allowed inside the tent. This is why the notion of a reliable machine generated “paper component” is a fiction, and why elections conducted on BMDs cannot be confirmed by audits.
No leader in Louisiana can accurately say that they stand with President Trump on issues of profound significance unless they stand with him on the most important issue of our day: fully securing our voting system through a secure, hand-marked, all-paper ballot voting system. It is time to get moving. Louisiana voters deserve no less, and should demand no less.
J. Christopher Alexander
Louisiana Citizen Advocacy Group www.lacag.org
