Former President Donald Trump and one of his most vocal supporters, tech billionaire Elon Musk, have alleged without evidence that the potential for voter fraud is a major threat.
Voting is ultimately an act of faith in democracy, and undercutting the system, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is clearly a strategy on the part of Trump’s allies.
To better understand the security of US voting systems and why there’s no indication that they’re not secure, I talked to CNN’s Zachary Cohen, who covers national security, and Sean Lyngaas, who covers cybersecurity. They’re both part of a larger team of reporters at CNN who are focused on election security. Our conversation was edited for clarity. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation:
WOLF: How does the process of voting generally work with these systems?
LYNGAAS: You have different equipment that handles the voter registration database, so when you show up on voting day or whenever you go to vote, they can compare what’s in that voter registration to what’s in front of them in terms of their records.
About 97% of votes are cast with a paper record. Federal officials, election officials are using that as a point of reference to try to convince people that their vote is secure and accurate, which it is.
Voting machines – some are a touch tablet where you have a panel, and you make your choice and print that out. In other systems, a voter fills out the ballot with a pen and then feeds it into a voting machine.
COHEN: There’s a common misconception that the voting machines are the complete process. In reality, they’re one part of a bigger system that goes into casting, then storing and counting votes. In a lot of states, a county will transfer the data they get from the machines themselves via USB and go manually plug that into a computer.
All that data is then gathered and collected online by the secretary of states or by whoever is in charge, ultimately, of preserving that data. Then there is obviously the paper ballot part of it, which is more about reassuring the voter, but also can be used as an audit tool as well.
