Virginia Scraps Electronic Voting Machines Hackers Destroyed At DefCon (theregister.co.uk)

Following the DefCon demonstration in July that showed how quickly Direct Recording Electronic voting equipment could be hacked, Virginia's State Board of Elections has decided it wants to replace their electronic voting machines in time for the gubernatorial election due on November 7th, 2017. According to The Register, "The decision was announced in the minutes of the Board's September 8th meeting: 'The Department of Elections officially recommends that the State Board of Elections decertify all Direct Recording Electronic (DRE or touchscreen) voting equipment." From the report: With the DefCon bods showing some machines shared a single hard-coded password, Virginia directed the Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA) to audit the machines in use in the state (the Accuvote TSX, the Patriot, and the AVC Advantage). None passed the test. VITA told the board "each device analyzed exhibited material risks to the integrity or availability of the election process," and the lack of a paper audit trail posed a significant risk of lost votes. Local outlet The News Leader notes that many precincts had either replaced their machines already, or are in the process of doing so. The election board's decision will force a change-over on the 140 precincts that haven't replaced their machines, covering 190,000 of Virginia's ~8.4m population.

Comments

Re:Why americans don't care?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

We use first-past-the-post voting, for a single representative, which Duverger's Law tells us inevetably results in a two-party system. In other words, the two-party problem is systemic and isn't going to go away simply by wishing it would, or especially, by voting for some quixotic can't-possibly-win third-party candidate, on the theory that that will somehow change things.

Re:Let's face it

[Curunir_wolf]

The city of Richmond replaced all their touch-screen voting machines 3 years ago. The replacement? Paper ballots and scanners.

As an election officer, I prefer the paper ballots. Easy to track and easy to recount when necessary. I trust the system a lot more than the old touch screens. What's wrong with paper ballots? It's just as fast getting voters through and counting is actually easier.