PITTSBURGH (Newsradio 1020 KDKA) – A study of voting in Pennsylvania finds most of the machines used to cast ballots are vulnerable to hacking and should be replaced before the 2020 elections.
The Blue Ribbon Commission on Pennsylvania’s Election Security recommends replacing the insecure DRE or Direct Recording Electronic voting systems because they leave no paper trail of how a person voted. It recommends voter-marked paper ballots that can be recorded on optical scan machines.
“Eighty percent of the machines in Pennsylvania are so-called DRE machines. They have been demonstrated conclusively to be especially vulnerable and susceptible to hacking,” according to Commission Co-Chair David Hickton. Hickton heads the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. He headed the Commission with Grove City College President Paul McNulty.
“We know we are under attack, we know the methods of attack, and we know the points within the architecture that are most at risk,” said Hickton.
The Commission made a number of other recommendations. It suggests the state take out a bond issue to pay for new voting machines. It says voting officials should depend less on vendors to handle voting data. It says cybersecurity should be a top priority when sub-contractors are selected. It also recommends state law be changed to give the Department of State authority to suspend or extend elections due to wide scale cyber-related attacks, natural disasters or other emergencies.