Hackers Crack Voting Machines Within Minutes At DEF CON In Vegas

[politicat]

36. If you're going to doubt optical scanners...

You need to doubt 50 years of academic testing, everything from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills through the SAT to the GRE and bar exams, CPA exams, actuary exams. Academia has been using -- and securing -- optical scanners since Scantron.

Scanners are airgapped -- they don't have network connections -- and they're secured when not in use. Sure, a scanner can be hacked, the same way a Roomba or an electronic sewing machine can be hacked -- if the hacker is in the same room with it, with a screwdriver. Assuming that hundreds of the county clerks and recorders have all been turned in exactly the same way is multiverse possible, but highly unlikely.

Humans are far less accurate than machines. We make errors between 1 in 10,000 and 1 in 100,000 times. And we make more mistakes when we're tired and under pressure. Machine accuracy (optical scanner) starts at 1 in 100 million.

Certification takes weeks, during which time we count those ballots multiple times, running spot checks for accuracy. There's a reason this takes so long. Get rid of the touch screens, IoT versions, and non-tracking systems - absolutely. They're expensive, failure prone, not secure and they don't do what they promised. But paper ballots and scanners are not the problem here.