Cybersecurity experts urge retirement of touchscreen voting machines used in Pennsylvania

Hand marked paper ballots that are electronically scanned and stored for future review are the basis of a resilient and trustworthy election system, cybersecurity and election integrity experts told Pennsylvania Senate lawmakers on Monday.

They urged members of the Senate State Government Committee to move Pennsylvania away from the use of electronic ballot marking devices, such as the touchscreen voting machines used by the state’s most populous county, Philadelphia, and in Northampton County, where errors involving the machines have twice raised questions about their accuracy.

“Election security requires considering a wide range of threats to elections, from simple rainstorms to sophisticated adversaries,” said Kevin Skoglund, president and chief technologist for Citizens for Better Elections, a non-partisan group based in Pennsylvania. “With so many types of threats it may be surprising to learn that the majority of the security risks can be mitigated through two measures: resilience planning, and evidence based elections.”

Paper ballots accurately record the voters’ choices in a way that can be preserved and secured against tampering with a rigorous chain of custody to serve as evidence that the results of an election reflect the intent of voters, Skoglund said.

While all of Pennsylvania’s counties have replaced outdated paperless voting machines, 20 still use electronic ballot marking devices which are susceptible to programming errors or, potentially, hacking, which could result in the votes recorded not reflecting the voters’ intent, Skoglund said.

Questioned by Sen. Anthony Williams (D-Philadelphia), Skogland and two computer science professors who testified Monday, Andrew Appel of Princeton University and Alec Yasinsac of the University of South Alabama, said despite their warnings of vulnerabilities, there is no evidence to call past elections into question. Both Appel and Yasinac said they were not speaking on behalf of their institutions.

“I’m not aware of any strong or proven evidence of any previous ballot changing,” Yasinsac said, adding “I am comfortable with the election machines in past elections.”

 

 

State Government Committee Chairman Cris Dush (R-Jefferson) opened Monday’s hearing saying the purpose of the hearing was not to discuss past elections.

“Our goal is to bring up the science of secure elections, so we can make sure that every qualified elector’s vote is properly cast and counted,” Dush said.

Dush played a role in amplifying former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. That baseless claim and efforts to overturn the election led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and election interference charges against Trump last year in Georgia and the District of Columbia.

In November 2020, Dush, then a state representative, co-sponsored a House resolution that declared the election results to be in dispute and was one of 64 state Republicans who signed a letter to the Pennsylvania congressional delegation urging them to reject electors appointed by then-Gov. Tom Wolf.

Dush was also assigned to take over a Senate investigation of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential and 2021 primary elections from Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin), who also pushed to invalidate Pennsylvania’s election results. The state Supreme Court last month ruled that a subpoena for Pennsylvania voters’ personal information was not enforceable.

The experts who testified Monday are among 20 who signed a letter to the leaders of the Senate and House State Government committees outlining advantages and risks of electronic voting technology from a computer science perspective. The group describes itself as nonpartisan and state Sen. Amanda Cappelletti (D-Montgomery) said at the beginning of the hearing that the testifiers had been selected in a bipartisan manner.

Northampton County’s trouble with its touchscreen voting machines illustrates the vulnerability of such devices, Appel, the Princeton professor, said.

In November 2023, some voters noticed that the printed marked ballots they received from the Express Vote XL machines reflected the opposite of their intended votes on the touchscreen. The discovery caused widespread confusion and delay as election officials scrambled to respond.

Voting rights groups call for investigation of Election Day problems in Northampton County

The malfunction occurred in the Superior Court retention race where the voter had to select ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to vote for Judges Jack Panella and Victor Stabile to retain their seats.

Some polling places told voters to come back later and some switched to emergency ballots while others continued to allow voters to cast their ballots. An investigation revealed a clerical error while setting up the machines for the election had caused the malfunction.

Northampton County’s machines also malfunctioned in 2019, leading to votes for a judicial candidate being improperly recorded.

Appel said the fact that a touch screen can result in votes being recorded differently than voters intend, whether as a mistake or with malicious intent, is a serious vulnerability. While all Pennsylvania counties use machines that produce a paper record, Appel said research has shown that many voters do not look at the paper ballot or don’t take the time to check it before it is counted.

“There’s no evidence that anyone has used this security vulnerability to cheat in elections thus far, but I strongly recommend that Pennsylvania change to hand marked paper ballots in all counties and limit the use of touchscreen voting machines to those voters who cannot mark a paper ballot by hand,” Appel said.

Hand marked ballots counted with optical scanners – a process used by 47 Pennsylvania counties – eliminate that vulnerability and produce a paper record that can reveal tampering through random audits, Appel said.

“If those optical scanners are ever hacked or malfunction in some other way, the problem will be detected and corrected by recounting the paper ballots,” Appel said. “In contrast, with ballot marking devices hacks are difficult to detect and impossible to correct.”

 

 

Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and Twitter.