When we need good information about an illness, we turn to doctors and medical professionals. When we can’t diagnose our car trouble, we rely on the skills of a mechanic. When we need to maximize our savings for retirement, we consult with financial planners. We rely on professionals and experts all the time to benefit from the wealth of their experiences and knowledge.
When voting in person, our inalienable right, how can we ensure the sanctity of our vote? Ask the professionals who have spent years studying the issue: computer scientists. They are the experts when it comes to voting machines, not politicians.
Politicians are lured to trade shows where companies show off their fancy new voting machines and make claims that their product is the best, with impressive statements that some even come with a so-called paper trail. And the politicians bite a big bite, often spending millions of taxpayer dollars on these fancy new systems for their districts.
But all of these machines are extremely vulnerable to hacking and break down, as are all electronics. Yes, even machines that supposedly never connect to the internet are easily compromised.
The solution? Low-tech. Cheap. Secure. Highly effective. The computer scientists, after exhaustive studies, have concluded that the safest, most tamper-free way to vote in person and have each vote count is by paper ballot.
Cardboard dividers at each polling place provide the privacy needed for each voter while they fill out a paper ballot. The voter then inserts their completed ballot into a scanner enclosed in a secured box. Depending on the size of the district, multiple scanners can be used. If a scanner breaks down, the ballot can still be inserted into another slot in the locked box to be counted later.
If there’s any question about the final vote tally, all of those ballots provide a reliable paper trail. The political parties monitor the voting and vote counts together to ensure the integrity of the election. This low-tech solution to in-person voting minimizes the risk of cheating and has been shown to be the least vulnerable to foul play. Voters across the country must demand this simple, fair, and inexpensive solution that’s easy to implement, provides ballot protection, and can do much to speed up lines at polling places.
The nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Monmouth County sponsored a free educational seminar regarding the security of voting machines last fall. Andrew Appel, computer scientist at Princeton University, spoke eloquently on the subject and reported his findings and those of others who have studied the issue. For more information, see cs.princeton.edu/~appel/.
Susan Krol, Freehold
The article originally appeared in the June 25 – July 1, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
