Monroe County, Indiana – A new report is raising concerns that many voting machines in Indiana are vulnerable to security issues.
Indiana University reviewed several types of voting machines and found most Hoosiers cast a ballot using direct-recording electronic machines. Those are the ones that have a touch screen. They don’t store your votes in the computer memory.
The conclusion is these have security risks because it’s hard to track any breaches to the system or count the votes if a problem comes up. This is especially true if they don’t keep a paper record. And according to this study, 60% of Indiana’s machines do not.
“If something were to happen, machines malfunctioned or there’s a question of voting and recounting, you cannot go back and recount,” Joti Martin a policy analyst for the Public Policy Institute at Indiana University said.
The study points out Indiana is only one of eight states using paperless voting machines for this election.
The secretary of state’s office says it used funds from the Help America Vote Act so that at least 10% of paperless voting machines in the state now have voter-verifiable paper trails.
The study advises states to take extra care when storing, maintaining, and testing paperless machines and make sure poll workers know what to do in case a system fails.
