Maricopa County, Arizona, has become the nation’s ultimate swing county, a place that could determine whether Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump will be the next U.S. president.
Eh, there’s several ways to secure electronic tabulation - in fact, most states do use electronic tabulation with checksums and tons of layered security (including airgaps). The paper ballots are kept as a backup in these cases of course. If the checksum doesn’t match or some other metric is off, you can recount the votes using the paper ballots.
For example, Washington state’s process of tabulation:
The votes are tabulated by certified individuals using machines that are not connected to the internet at 8 pm on election day. The machines are individually certified by federal and state authorities and independently tested in NIST laboratories. As votes are tabulated, voters can track their ballot’s progress through the VoteWA system.
An independent study by The Heritage Foundation reviewed 10.6 million ballots cast in the state of Washington between 2004 and 2010 and only found seven fraudulent votes attempted by mail. “I have not seen any new fraud since moving to the system… in my 14 years, we have only had two fraud cases, and one called to inform and apologize,” said Marianne Nichols, Pend Oreille Auditor. “We rarely come across cases of double-voters or attempts to vote another person’s ballot,” added Julie Anderson. “Most cases are voter mistakes, not an attempt to commit fraud or undermine an election.”
Wisconsin too. Good radio piece on that:
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/22/wisconsin-voters-election-milwaukee-security-denier
tl;dl
Wisconsin tabulates ballots by MUNICIPALITY, not precinct. They have 1,800 ballot collection centers and don’t report until ALL 1,800 are done.
Bonus: One of their fake electors is on the election board and can’t be removed except by the Senate Majority Leader.
What a painful way to tabulate, seems like an artifact from before we had connected, electronic tabulation?
Not sure, it’s definitely a weird way to do it!
You dont want electronic voting in elections as it reduces the security of the system allowing bad actors to hack the result into their favour.
Paper ballots that are manually counted is the way to go.
Eh, there’s several ways to secure electronic tabulation - in fact, most states do use electronic tabulation with checksums and tons of layered security (including airgaps). The paper ballots are kept as a backup in these cases of course. If the checksum doesn’t match or some other metric is off, you can recount the votes using the paper ballots.
For example, Washington state’s process of tabulation:
Source