- Oct 17, 2011
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Republicans Say They Care About Election Fraud. Here’s How They Could Actually Prevent It.
The gold standard for voting security is hand-marked paper ballots, according to security experts. That’s because a paper ballot eliminates the risk of technical difficulties or certain kinds of malicious acts (think hacking) that could change or destroy your vote, and any concerns can be addressed with a recount. Because of that, most states currently use hand-marked paper ballots or have voting machines that generate paper records for verification.
But in six states — Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas — some or all voters still cast ballots on machines that have no paper record whatsoever, according to data from Verified Voting.
Yet according to FiveThirtyEight’s past reporting and additional calls I made for this story, in five of those six states there has been little or no effort in the past six months to prioritize updating machines with a system that includes a paper record.
For all the talk of voting software and changed votes, there's not much activity to address the worst potential cases, where currently no physical recount is even possible. Texas appears to be the only state where laws to ensure paper ballots are getting some headway. Others are ignoring the situation or actively opposing such efforts. (New Jersey actually did pass a law 10 years ago, but provided no timeline, so only 7 counties have upgraded to paper.)
The gold standard for voting security is hand-marked paper ballots, according to security experts. That’s because a paper ballot eliminates the risk of technical difficulties or certain kinds of malicious acts (think hacking) that could change or destroy your vote, and any concerns can be addressed with a recount. Because of that, most states currently use hand-marked paper ballots or have voting machines that generate paper records for verification.
But in six states — Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas — some or all voters still cast ballots on machines that have no paper record whatsoever, according to data from Verified Voting.
Yet according to FiveThirtyEight’s past reporting and additional calls I made for this story, in five of those six states there has been little or no effort in the past six months to prioritize updating machines with a system that includes a paper record.
For all the talk of voting software and changed votes, there's not much activity to address the worst potential cases, where currently no physical recount is even possible. Texas appears to be the only state where laws to ensure paper ballots are getting some headway. Others are ignoring the situation or actively opposing such efforts. (New Jersey actually did pass a law 10 years ago, but provided no timeline, so only 7 counties have upgraded to paper.)
