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'SMART Elections’ Election Protection Series offers a Master Class in Election Security. Lulu Friesdat, her guest speakers and informative visuals not only illustrate the pitfalls of bad voting machine technology but also offer examples of safe alternatives.”
- Sara Campbell, advocate
Tuesday, April 20 • 7–8 pm ET
Live broadcast: YouTube and Facebook
We all want to believe that election results are accurate. But polls show that voter confidence in election results is low. Those who conduct polls say, "By and large, the American people do not believe our elections are safe..."
So what can we look at to help us determine if results are correct? Audits? Election Data? Statistical Analysis? You deserve accurate fair elections and we're trying to make sure you get them!
The #ElectionProtection forums are a vibrant, revealing dialogue about the problems with our elections & what's needed to improve them. We discuss election security, disability issues, voting rights, and election reform, from perspectives across the political spectrum. You won't get this information anywhere else!
Moderator: Lulu Friesdat, Election Security Journalist, Co-Founder & Executive Director of SMART Elections
Co-Host: Bennie Smith, Shelby County TN Election Commissioner & Software Developer
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Co-sponsors: DemCast USA • Democracy Counts • Citizens for Voting Integrity NY • Indivisible Long Beach NY • Indivisible Scarsdale NY • Sierra Club (Lower Hudson Group)
The New York State Board of Elections rejected certification of the ExpressVote XL at their meeting on 1/28/21. The ExpressVote XL is a "hybrid" voting machine that has a design flaw called a "shared paper path." It is considered very risky by security experts.
Learn more about hybrid voting machines with a shared paper path.
Professor Rich DeMillo, Chair of the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at Georgia Tech, said, “It is encouraging that the commissioners refused to certify the ExpressVoteXL, an all-in-one ballot marking device that poses extraordinary risks for the voters of New York.” DeMillo is one of a group of over 50 experts, good government and disability rights groups who signed a letter opposing certification of the voting machine.
However, the vendor ES&S is actively working to overcome the issues that were raised during the certification process and is already in conversation again with the NY State Board of Elections to have the system certified. Additionally there are other voting systems being marketed, and even in use here in New York that have the same security issues.
So the next step in protecting New York voters is to pass legislation to permanently ban hybrid voting machines with a shared paper path from being used in the state.
That legislation has been introduced in both the Assembly and the Senate:
Security experts have said that the ExpressVote XL is not secure, and that, "Elections conducted on current BMDs [ballot-marking devices] cannot be confirmed by audits." They do not recommend this type of voting machine. They recommend hand-marked paper ballots, for all voters who are able to mark their ballot by hand, and ballot-marking devices that follow security best-practices for voters with disabilities.
Here are few reasons why so many groups, experts and advocates are against the use of the ExpressVote XL.
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Voting machines didn’t steal the election. But most are still terrible technology.
by Cory Doctorow
Feb. 3, 2021
... the industry-leading, private-equity-owned ES&S, has seized on the moment to threaten members of SMART Elections, a journalism and advocacy group, with a lawsuit for spreading “false, defamatory and disparaging” information about one of its machines, the ExpressVote XL. These claims — factual observations, really — include that the machine “can add, delete, or change the votes on individual ballots” and that it is a “bad voting machine.”
Because SMART Elections is a collective of committed, individual activists — who translate academic research and relay it to state regulators — ES&S threatened to hold the members of the group “personally and individually liable”: ominous threats coming from any large company, but one that might especially worry activists, given ES&S’s history of litigiousness. (ES&S, a company that makes billions by charging the public millions to count its votes, is such a habitual litigant that sometimes it seems like the voting machines are a sideline for the lawsuits.)
But nothing SMART Elections is saying is controversial, let alone libelous. The definitive research on electronic voting system incompetence is the annual report from the “Voting Village” at DefCon, the gigantic Las Vegas hackers’ convention ... The hackers have been pointing out many of these problems for years.
Over 50 good government, disability, election protection groups and experts have signed a letter opposing certification of the ExpressVote XL.
Our team is looking at election results to see if they add up correctly. We've transcribed and examined poll tapes, audits, recounts, and are now doing public records requests.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS PROJECT.
We meet every other Tuesday at 7pm ET.
We would love your help!
Voters with disabilities deserve to vote independently, privately and comfortably and ballot marking devices have been developed to help them in that process.
But voters with disabilities also deserve to have their votes counted securely as intended; and many of the ballot marking devices being currently sold have serious security vulnerabilities.
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