we all remember the problem with paper ballots back in 2000 bush-gore and there have been complaints about electronic voting systems going back to 2004 what's the actual solution here yeah I in fact the problems in the 2000 election with the hanging chads that you you mentioned in Florida led to us to move to electronic systems and I think the answer is really what we need electronic systems whether they're scanners that read paper ballots or they're touchscreen machines have advantages but we need paper backup so that we can ensure that what the software is telling us
is accurate there are currently 21 states that have electronic voting systems and 5 states that have electronic voting systems with no paper trail at all New Jersey Delaware South Carolina Georgia and Louisiana would you say that these states are the most at risk for being hacked well one thing to keep in mind is that there are a number of aspects to our elections so there are registration databases that tell us who can vote their electronic poll books that are used in many places that allow people to sign in so that they can vote those are
also things that we have to worry about when we're talking about cyber attacks when it comes to the voting machines themselves unless I know what a lot of people are focused on and ensuring they're secure it's not that a paperless system is necessarily easier to hack right even if you're filling out a paper ballot as we do in about 2/3 of the country and then have that scanned in by a computer that computer could be hacked too but the thing that I'm worried about in in the five states that are all paperless and then they're
another eight that much of the state might be paperless for instance Pennsylvania is that there's no way to check afterwards with something that's independent of the software to make sure that the totals are accurate and that's that's a great concern and why many people who work in this space and and that includes the Department of Homeland Security and others have recommended that these systems be replaced now I know we're all focused on the tally because you know we want to know if the results could have been altered there is no evidence that we've heard that
that the results in in in the 2016 presidential election would be different if the election had not been compromised but do you do you buy that do we know for certain that the results you know wouldn't have been different well so here's the issue and the discussion around the the hacking and the interference in the 2016 election can get a little bit confused I should emphasize that all of the attacks on the election infrastructure that we know about were against things like the registration databases attempts to get into election officials emails things like that I'm
not aware of any animal think there's any public record of any attempt to get into the voting machines themselves no no evidence of any altering of vote totals but something that's really critical is part of the effort of the Russians and the 2016 election and frankly in in attacks and interference in elections around the world has been to discredit the whole idea of democracy and trust in democracy and I think we're going to be seeing more of that so it does really worry me that in 2018 2020 with social media propaganda and other things if
there are if there are doubts cast on the outcome of the election particularly in these states where they don't have paper backup and they're not checking the paper that that you really are leading to potentially just a crisis in the confidence in the electoral system in the United States and that's really dangerous well given that Congress just voted down a measure that would have provided additional funding for securing the vote how confident are you about these elections that are you know just over a hundred days away well I think a key thing first of all
Congress did provide about 380 million dollars a few months ago for upgrading election infrastructure I think the key thing for us to focus on for the next few months is that if there is a successful breach of systems and I think we have to act under the assumption that if there is an antagonistic nation state working against us that that's a real possibility that we can make sure that people can still vote and that their votes are counted
