Pennsylvania moves to replace all paperless voting machines by 2020

Paper records can't be hacked, and Pennsylvania is taking steps to make them an ingredient of all of its voting machines.

Pennsylvania says it will replace all voting machines that do not produce a paper record for each vote by 2020.

Acting Pennsylvania Secretary of State Robert Torres instructed all counties on Thursday to put machines in place that have a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) by the end of 2019, and “preferably in place by the November 2019 general election,” according to a press release.

“We want to bring about the system upgrades so Pennsylvania voters are voting on the most secure and auditable equipment as promptly and feasibly as possible, while also being supportive of the counties’ need to plan and budget for the new systems,” Torres said in a statement.

Having a VVPAT means that even if a voter makes selections on an electronic ballot, they will be able to confirm their choices on a paper ballot that can be used in an audit.

Election security experts have advocated for doing away with direct-recording electronic voting machines (DREs) that don’t produce a paper record because there’s no way to conduct a vote audit. Amid fears over election hacking, states have gradually been taking action.

In February, Pennsylvania joined the wave in a more limited approach, requiring that all new voting equipment produce a paper record. Thursday’s directive took the step of requiring that the machines be implemented wholesale.

Currently, Pennsylvania employs a mix of various types of voting machines, some producing a paper trail and some not. According to Verified Voting, a nonprofit that advocates for voting accuracy and transparency, 83 percent of voters in the state vote on DREs.

Pennsylvania is a swing state, which experts say could make it a target for hacks intending to change the outcome of a close election.

Pennsylvania’s move comes about two weeks after the U.S. Election Assistance Commission allocated about $13.5 million to Pennsylvania to use toward election security, part of a $380 million fund that Congress passed in March going to all states. Experts have argued that Congress and the EAC are not strict enough on how the fund can be used and that it is spread too thin.

For example, in South Carolina, which currently exclusively uses paperless machines, the state will not use the funding to buy new machines because it would not cover the full cost, according to BuzzFeed.

Fulton County lawsuit claims feds used ‘gross mischaracterizations’ to justify raid

A former federal election official says the FBI's affidavit justifying last month's Fulton County raid misrepresented basic election facts, despite the agency's claims having already been investigated…

GOP Congress moves to shape election law in Trump’s image

Trump threatens executive order on elections, claims states must obey

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure