CityState: Reporter
and Ohio were breached.
Francesca Spidalieri, a senior fellow
with the Pell Center at Salve Regina University
and the author of a 2015 report on
the cyber security of some state data systems,
says states are not doing enough to
defend their networks. Moreover, there
are no regulations governing voting
machines. The software is proprietary;
manufacturers don’t disclose their technology.
And hackers don’t have to upend
the entire system to do real damage.
“If they disrupt one or two systems, it
would cause disruptions across the country,
so it could happen next time. That’s
what they’ve learned,” Spidalieri says.
“Now that our enemies know we are so
vulnerable, others will attempt to do
the same.”
Less is known about the rate of election
error, except that it does occur. Officials
can forget to gather the count from individual
voting machines, voter registrations
can contain clerical errors, machine counts
can be wrong.
“Anything that can be done by nefarious
individuals can be done by accident by
honest people who make honest mistakes,”
Jones says. “Sometimes those mistakes can
add up to extraordinary messes.”
In 2016, North Kingstown voters
appeared to roundly reject a referendum
to set aside $2 million for a community
septic loan program — 8,471 to five. But a
three-hour recount ensued after residents
complained on social media that they had
supported the measure. Officials discovered
that 13,500 had actually cast ballots
on Question 9, but that changes to the ballot
after the machines had been calibrated
caused the optical scanner to mis-read the
bubble. The referendum passed, with more
than 67 percent approving it.
“The County Election” painting was
not an academic exercise. Bingham was
depicting his own election to the Missouri
legislature in 1846. He won by three votes.
But his Democratic rival, E.D. Sappington,
a wealthy landowner, had the results overturned
by the Democratic legislature.
Bingham was not discouraged. Two years
later, he ran against Sappington and won.
He didn’t lose faith in the electoral process.
Neither should we. �
Ellen Liberman is an award-winning journalist
who has commented on politics and reported on
government affairs for more than two decades.
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