As we have been warning, paper records from DRE (touch Screen) voting machines are not the equivalent of hand-marked paper ballots.
WhoWhatWhy: Will Georgia Double Down on Non-Transparent, Vulnerable Election Machines? <read>
The good news is that Georgia, which was the first state in the country to deploy paperless machines statewide, has finally decided to replace these machines. But Georgia’s newly elected secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger (R), hopes to replace them not with hand-marked paper ballots and scanners (as virtually all independent cybersecurity election experts recommend), but rather with touchscreen ballot-marking devices, a prime example of which is the ExpressVote system from Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S). The ExpressVote is the specific system that Governor-elect Brian Kemp (R) began promoting last year. ES&S is Georgia’s current vendor.
Like other touchscreen barcode balloting systems, the ExpressVote generates computer-marked paper printouts (Kemp and many others misleadingly call them “paper ballots”) with barcodes that are then counted on scanners. Although these paper printouts include human-readable text purporting to summarize the voter’s selections, the barcode, which humans can’t read, is the only part of the printout actually counted by the scanner. According to computer science professor Richard DeMillo of the Georgia Institute of Technology, the barcode constitutes a new potential target for malevolent actors, as it can be manipulated to instruct the scanner to flip or otherwise alter votes…
In addition to security concerns, all touchscreen systems tend to cause long lines because they limit the number of people who can vote at once to the number of touchscreens at the polling place…
The ExpressVote system also would cost taxpayers more than three times as much as hand-marked paper ballots and scanners:? an estimated $100 million as opposed to $30 million.
A system only greedy vendors and fraudsters would love.
******Update: Verified Voting Statement to Georgia <read>
