Panel examines elections issues

Actual election security problems and perceived election security problems are two different animals, according to a panel of experts who spoke at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin recently — and the solution to better security could have ramifications in Hays County.

“Hack the Vote” was an hour-long discussion of election security concerns moderated by Aman Batheja, political editor for the Texas Tribune. Panelists were John Dickson, principal at Denim Group and cyber security expert; Joshua Geltzer, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University; Keith Ingram, director of the elections division of the Texas Secretary of State’s office; and Dana DeBeauvoir, Travis County Clerk, who has overseen elections in Travis County since 1986 and recipient of the National Association of Election Officials’ 2009 Minute Man Award for the election security practice she developed.

Where is the Weakness?

In response to a question about vote tabulation, DeBeauvoir said voters do not need to be concerned about the vote itself.

“But they have reason, through social media, to think that the information that causes them to make a judgment about their vote will be tampered with,” she said.

Geltser agreed that the main concern is “discourse integrity” rather than “data integrity” — something that Dixon also said was the bigger concern, since it is known that Russians used social media to interfere with U.S. elections.

“They don’t care about the tabulation as much as they want to undermine our confidence in the entire election system, and there are all these new ways to do that,” Dixon said, citing social media campaigns, denial of service attacks on election-related websites and other methods of election tampering. DeBeauvoir noted that voting machines, which are not connected to the internet, would be harder to infiltrate than an online voter registration database. However, Ingram said the state’s database is much more secure than in previous years.

Hays County Elections Administrator Jennifer Anderson agreed that concerns about individual voting machines are likely misplaced.

“From the beginning, those in the elections industry have agreed that hacking voting systems would be highly unlikely without physical access and internet connectivity,” she said, noting the encryption required for system certification and Hays County’s internal policies that include wire seals, serial numbers and a chain of custody.

“All Texas county election officials are required to test tabulation equipment after programming — and again prior to and after tabulation to ensure that the equipment has not been altered in any way,” she said.

That said, during the panel discussion, DeBeauvoir emphasized the importance of having backup systems “to make sure that voters get taken care of, even if we lose connectivity, and even if everything doesn’t operate perfectly.” Doing that helps to maintain voter confidence, which is what Dixon said is really under attack.

“It’s not about the voting machines,” Dixon said. “It never has been.”

Protecting Voter Confidence

“A rose is a rose is a rose,” DeBeauvoir said, “but a hack is not a hack. It doesn’t really matter if a bad actor has actually traveled along the pathway and gotten to your data, as you mentioned before. What matters is, do people think it’s happening? Have they said on social media that they accomplished a hack? That’s all that has to happen. So the important thing is to create systems in place so that voters can be sure that at least what they put into the system can survive those kinds of attacks, even if it’s not real.”

WIth that goal in mind, DeBeauvoir praised the usefulness of paper audit trails in elections.

“I think it’s important to put in voter verified paper audit trails because the voter knows it’s correct. It doesn’t have to do with the probability of whether or not it will get hacked, or whether it actually gets hacked. It has to do with whether social media creates that doubt.

“... For many years, the vendor market that sells voting systems would not create a paper trail for voting systems,” she continued. “They wouldn’t manufacture it. You couldn’t buy it. We had to wait 15 years in order to get one.”

Last year, during discussions of new voting systems for Hays County, numerous members of the public voiced their desire for a paper trail at the polls. The county was prepared to purchase machines that do not provide a paper record of votes because of state regulations that would not allow the use of such machines at countywide polling places if Hays County chose to make the move to countywide voting centers. (The change to countywide voting would allow voters to cast their ballots at any polling place in the county, making voting more accessible.)

However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released an opinion (KP-0170) allowing hybrid machines at countywide polling places. Previously, only direct recording electronic voting machines would be allowed. The summary of Paxton’s opinion states, “To participate in the countywide polling place program, a county must, among other requirements, use direct recording electronic voting machines. That a voting machine produces a marked paper ballot or includes multiple pieces of equipment that operate together to effectuate direct voting does not disqualify the machine from use in a countywide polling place program as long as the voting machines meet the other requirements of a direct recording electronic voting machine.”

A Local Paper Trail?

“Even though I believe the electronic systems are fair and accurate,” Anderson said, “I do understand that the public feels more comfortable with a paper trail for verification and recount purposes. In my opinion, vendors have come up with hybrid systems that can satisfy this component for the voter, and still allow for electronic tabulation which makes election night tallying the most accurate and efficient. With changes in law, these systems would be suitable for use in the countywide polling program, or vote centers.”

Anderson said that she believes next year, the Hays County Commissioners Court will take the attorney general’s opinion into account.

However, she said, “The important thing to remember is that the changes are now only in the form of an AG Opinion,. “We will be watching the 86th Legislative Session to see if these changes will be voted into law, and I believe legislators will make this change official, as I firmly believe that elections will be a priority this next year in Austin, as well as nationally.”

DeBeauvoir said the new machines that Travis County will be using will create an electronic record of the paper ballot. The machines will be “all new technology, and it’s going to be much easier on voters to trust that kind of a system.”

“Even when they hear on social media that, ‘Oh, yes, we’ve succeeded in an attack,’ voters are going to be more likely to say, ‘I’m not so sure I believe that,’” DeBeauvoir said. “And one of the things that I hope we’ve learned from 2016 is don’t believe what you read on social media.”