Election Security Goals

By Jennifer Cohn
May 24, 2019, most recent update 2/5/20

Note: This piece was updated on August 2, 2019 to indicate that the PAVE Act is now called the SAFE Act and that the SAFE Act has passed the House.

According to experts, the only way to know if an electronic vote total has been hacked is for voters to have separately recorded their intended selections on paper and for jurisdictions to then use the paper in a manual audit or recount, the results of which can be compared to the electronic total.

But even manual audits or recounts can be “hacked” if the selections on the paper have been marked by a machine, rather than the voter’s own hand. And no matter how that paper is marked, manual audits and recounts can be gamed if the chain of custody between election night and the audit or recount has been compromised.

With these basic principles in mind, here are ten realistic election security goals for 2020.

1. Hand marked paper ballots as a primary voting system.

• Experts recommend that most voters use hand marked paper ballots (counted on scanners or by hand), as opposed to machine-marked printouts from hackable ballot marking devices (BMDs). BMDs are, in effect, $3,000-$5,000 electronic pencils that look like…