NEWSWEEK.COM 31
of California at Berkeley statistician who analyzes
election integrity. The COVID-19 crisis, he says, is
providing those states and counties with even more
excuses to limit access to polling places.
The results are predictable: If Democrats win,
Republicans will conjure up stories of a sea of
fraudulent votes. If Republicans win, Democrats
will charge that their votes couldn’t get through.Risks in the Machine
for those voters who do make it to the voting
booth, can they be sure their vote will be counted?
In most cases the answer is no, says Stark, who hasone-stop targets for hackers and corrupt insiders
who could be paid to sway the count.
The only way to ensure that all voters’s selec-
tions are counted is to have them mark their
choices on paper ballots, says Stark. That way, the
results can be easily checked should allegations
of irregularities emerge. Some machines register
votes electronically and then produce a marked
paper ballot that can be used for a recount or audit,
but Stark says that’s not good enough. “There’s zero
additional security there unless the voter takes
the trouble to check that the machine has marked
the vote correctly,” he says. “The more you rely onbeen vocal in debates over voting-machine security.
“We’re not in better shape than we were in 2016,” he
says. “Arguably, we’re in worse shape.”
The problem, he says, is that virtually all voting
machines have proven vulnerable in tests to mali-
cious rigging or intrusion efforts, faulty preparation
by inadequately trained local technicians, malfunc-
tions as simple as power failures or inadequate elec-
trical cords and other issues. Georgia, Pennsylvania
and California have all experienced problems with
malfunctioning machines. Even worse, he says,
the election-night aggregation of electronic vote
counts at county and state levels provides temptingBLOCK THAT VOTE
Small shifts in
turnout could swing
battleground states.
Some have fought to
block mail-in voting.
Left to right: Primary
voters in Atlanta; former
Trump advisor Roger
Stone; a Pizzagate
demonstration outside
the White House.VOTING, THE MORE FRAGILITY
SYSTEM FOR HACKERS TO EXPLOIT.”
CLOC.WISEFROMLEFT
^ ELIJAHN
OUVELA*Eʔ*ETTY
;^ ALE;^ WROBLEWS.IʔBLOOMBER*ʔ*ETTY;^MICHAEL^ E.^ M
ILLERʔTHE^ WASHI
N*TON^
POSTʔ*ETTY