- Whether you're filling
out a paper ballot,
or you're voting directly onto a machine,
there's a computer involved,
and all computers have some kind
of security vulnerability
attached to them,
that's the nature of
computers and software.
So, the question really should be
what can we do to mitigate that risk?
- Super Tuesday is coming up,
but as caucuses and
primaries try out new ways
to streamline the voting process,
questions are being raised
about voting security.
And, to learn more
about voting technology,
we're talking to Larry Nordon
from NYU's Brennan Center.
- There is no such thing
as a perfect election,
so there will certainly be hiccups.
- So in 2020, can we all be
expecting to vote on our phones?
- I don't think, and frankly I hope
that we're not doing that too soon.
We're not ready to vote by phone,
and it's not just the challenges
of being able to transmit
votes in a way that is secure
when we know that there are nation states
that are attempting to
interfere in our elections.
It's also ensuring that voters themselves
aren't victims of spoofs.
I think people often
also ask the question,
"Well, I bank by phone, why
can't I do this by phone?"
And, there's the additional
challenge of the secret ballot,
and we want to ensure that
people can vote privately,
and the only way to do that
is to make sure that the
system is extra secure.
- Right, with my bank,
they know how much money
I have in my account.
- And you can go check it.
You can go to them and report to that,
and they should see it also.
And, when you vote on a machine,
there's hopefully a paper record
that they can go to and check to make sure
that the software is recording
your votes accurately.
- And, what about people
who've heard things
about the Iowa Caucus app in the news?
A lot of things went awry,
- What happened in Iowa is a great example
of the challenges of voting by phone.
That was an app to report results.
- It had a lotta issues.
- It had a lot of issues, it didn't work.
They were lucky that
they had paper back-ups
that they could go to to add up the votes,
and that they can still go back to
to double check the results,
and fix whatever the problems are.
If people were voting on that app,
we wouldn't be able to go
back and know with confidence
that the results were accurate,
and I think there were a lot
of important lessons from Iowa.
One of them is that you
don't wanna roll out
new untested technology just
before a really big election.
Macy's wouldn't roll out new
cash registers on Black Friday.
Iowa wasn't a primary, it was a caucus,
which means that the Democratic
Party was running that.
It wasn't run by election professionals.
I'd like to think that
most election officials
wouldn't make the kind of
mistake that they made in Iowa.
And, it's also a lesson in
having contingency plans,
having resiliency plans.
If something goes wrong,
what can you turn to make sure
that the election still runs smoothly?
- What are some, you know,
cutting-edge technologies
that have really helped the
voting and election days
run more smoothly?
- Electronic pollbooks
have been very helpful
in making the process of
checking in to voting faster.
It can essentially talk to each other
so that if you've checked in on one line,
all of the other pollbooks will
know that you've checked in.
Almost every state at this point
has online voter registration,
and that has a lot of benefits
not just because it's easier to register,
but because it's also easy to check
if there are any problems
with your registration
ahead of time.
There has been a move towards paper.
Machines that relied only on software
that didn't have some kind of
paper ballot or paper backup
could be susceptible to hacks,
and would never know it.
And so, there's been a
dramatic move back to paper.
- Paper is a pretty impressive
technology [chuckles].
- It's a very useful technology,
and it's a very useful redundancy.
And for something like voting
where there's a secret ballot,
and where there's not really
any other independent way
to check that the tallies
that you're getting
from the software are accurate
that you need that independent record.
- A lot of issues, or
problems, or bumps in the road
are expected in elections, right?
And, election officials
are prepared for that,
trained for that, and
know how to react, right?
- Election officials in
general have gotten very good
at contingency planning,
and thinking about what might go wrong.
One of the challenges that we have
in an age of social
media and disinformation
is to ensure that every little hiccup
doesn't lead to conspiracy theories,
or the assumptions about
why they're happening.
- So, if people have heard
that security researchers
and security experts
have found flaws and problems
with voting machines,
what would you tell them about
what's going on with that?
- For the most part, all
Americans are voting on computers.
Whether you're filling out a paper ballot,
or you're voting directly onto a machine,
there's a computer involved,
and all computers have some
kind of security vulnerability
attached to them.
That's the nature of
computers and software.
So, the fact that people are able to find
security vulnerabilities in
them isn't that surprising..
The question really should be:
What can we do to mitigate that risk?
What can we do to make sure
that if there is some hacker
or malware on the system
that we can catch it, and
that we can recover from it?
And, the big answer for that, frankly,
is having a paper backup.
The good news on that is
that's not hard to do,
and there's no reason why we
shouldn't be able to do it
before the 2020 election.
We have the tools to audit if we want to.
- So, currently in the US
for this really diverse system we have,
what type of oversight is there
for the types of
organizations and companies
that are selling equipment,
and the equipment itself?
- I make a distinction
between the equipment
and the vendors who are
selling the equipment.
For the equipment, there's some oversight.
There is a federal certification process
that's voluntary for voting machines,
and those have to be,
if you wanna have a
federally certified machine,
not everybody does in the United States,
but most states use the
program in some way,
you have to go through a testing process
that tests around security and
usability and accessibility.
Separate from that is the companies
who work in our elections,
the private companies who
work in our elections.
Those private vendors touch
every aspect of our elections,
and there, there is zero
regulation at the federal level,
and what that means is you can have things
like happened in Maryland recently
where they discovered
that one of their vendors
for their registration system
was actually owned by a Russian oligarch
with close ties to Vladimir Putin.
They would not have known that
if the FBI hadn't informed that,
and in fact, that had
been the case for a while
before they found out about it.
So, from my perspective
that's a real problem,
and we're eventually gonna need
federal oversight and involvement.
- So, a lot of primaries
are gonna be happening on Super Tuesday.
A lot is gonna be going on.
What can we expect?
- I'm very hopeful that what we can expect
is an election that goes smoothly.
There will be states
where voters are voting on new
equipment for the first time,
so that may pose some challenges to voters
who aren't familiar with the equipment.
Another thing that we should
be expecting is high turnout,
and that's something that
we have to be ready for.
And again, I'm hopeful
that election officials
are preparing for that high turnout,
and that are ready that if systems fail,
that they have back-up plans in place
so that people can still vote,
and that they can vote with confidence
that their ballots are
are going to be counted.
- Looking ahead, what
trajectory do you think we're on
in terms of the safety,
security, and stability
of elections in the United States?
- I think the trend is a good one.
We haven't done as much as
I would've liked since 2016,
but there's no question
that there is a much greater awareness
of election security issues
than there was both in
the elections community
among election officials,
and at the state and federal level
than there was just a few years ago.
There's been more resources
devoted to election security,
and we've had a move to
paper and to redundancies.
Every battleground state
in the United States
now has a paper record of every vote.
We are using that paper more and more
to double check the accuracy
of electronic totals.
And so, while we're far
from where we need to be,
and cybersecurity is a
race without a finish line,
so we're gonna have to
keep investing in it.
We're on the right course
in that we understand that it's a race,
and that we're gonna need
to continue to be vigilant,
and that's really the most important step
that we could be making.
- Yeah, there's a lot
to talk through here,
so thank you so much for coming.
- Thanks, Lily.
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