9-minute read
Americans’ faith in elections took a big hit in 2020. National polls show 61% of the population is generally confident that the upcoming presidential election will be conducted fairly. But that means more than a third have doubts.
To find out how secure elections in Polk County are, LkldNow scoured the Internet for the most plausible-sounding theories about how voting could be hacked — then we spent an afternoon at the Supervisor of Elections Office to see if any might work.
This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaboration on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
Hacking test: Voting machine manipulation
High-profile data breaches make the news so often, they’re hard to keep track of. So it’s not surprising that many voters’ top security concerns are about the high-tech elements of modern voting.
Common fears include hackers or foreign governments accessing a backdoor flaw in voting machines to switch votes from one candidate to another.
“Probably the most common accusation is that the individual election equipment is prone to being manipulated wirelessly,” Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards said. “That somehow, wirelessly, a bad guy in a van outside can manipulate the results.”
Why we couldn’t hack it. In Polk County, voters feed their paper ballots into black ES&S DS200 optical scanner machines that cost about $5,000 apiece, last about 20 years and are the size of residential trash bins. The biggest challenges to hacking the machines are that they don’t have WiFi, are not connected to the Internet and are not linked with each other.
Edwards said the machines are equipped with a telephone modem that is turned on briefly after the polls close to transmit unofficial results. But it is one-way communication — sending, not receiving — to provide quick updates to the public. And the transmission doesn’t happen until after the actual results have been backed up in multiple ways:
- Paper ballots — Votes are recorded on paper ballots, which are protected through a documented chain of custody and spot-checked during the canvassing process.
- Secure media — Results from the scanning machines at each precinct are loaded onto “secure media” devices that look like flash drives. Each device is unpackaged for the first time at the polling place and only ever used once. They are put in tubes that are sealed and witnessed by two people — usually of opposing parties — before they are transported to the elections office. At the office, two people must be present to break the seal.
- Audit log — The machines keep detailed and timestamped audit logs that can be printed at any time, showing all actions and events that have occurred on the unit. After the polls close, vote totals are printed on-site and taped to the doors at precinct locations to ensure that the numbers received at the office match.
- Voter check-in — Poll workers use tablets that are connected to the Internet to download voter rolls, check signatures against public records and make sure individuals haven’t already voted early or by mail. The check-in system is separate from the scanning machines, so it would be apparent if there were discrepancies between the number of voters and number of ballots cast.
Polk’s equipment earns an ‘A’: On a map of voting equipment across the nation published by the nonprofit group Verified Voting, Polk County and the rest of Florida is colored dark green — the highest level of security. That’s largely because voters mark paper ballots that can be counted manually in a post-election audit or recount.
The problem of scale: Without wireless access or interconnections between vote tabulating machines, a hacker would have to physically tamper with each one.
Election Operations Manager Curtis Hatfield said Polk County has about 200 of the optical scanners, of which 150 to 160 might be deployed in any given election. Between elections, they are locked in a large warehouse-like room at the Supervisor of Elections Office near the Auburndale Speedway.
The ballots in every election cycle are unique, so if something had been done to the machines at the factory — potentially a decade ago or longer — a hacker would need fresh access to boost a particular candidate.
Between now and Nov. 5, each machine will be tested with a “test deck” of 7,200 ballots to ensure that they are working properly and report correct totals. The software, logic and accuracy tests are conducted in view of cameras and with multiple people present. No election workers can access the floor after hours.
Hacking test: Corrupt election officials
The Supervisor of Elections’ office is a bustling place with lots of people answering calls, working at computers, and filing artifacts of the Aug. 20 primary to make way for the Nov. 5 general election, among other things.
A common security concern is that bad actors — “deep state” partisans, foreign spies, or corrupt officials who have been bribed — could infiltrate the office and sway the vote. But that is easier said than done.
Why we couldn’t hack it: Each elections employee needs two things to open doors or log into computers — a password and a device (usually a fob or badge). Without the dual-factor authentication, they can’t get in.
All employees are thoroughly background-checked. Levels of access vary, depending on the employee’s role. Temporary workers must keep their possessions in lockers, including handbags and cell phones.
Edwards said sensitive tasks like tallying votes are done in a fishbowl-like room with windows along two walls and cameras monitoring every move. Two people must be present for most tasks involving ballots or machines.
Hacking test: Ineligible voters
Election fraud can take many forms — such as filling out an absentee ballot for someone who has died or moved away, pretending to be someone else at a polling place, forging someone’s signature on a mail-in ballot, or voting more than once in the same election.
Mistrust in the 2020 election results was stoked by claims of widespread voter fraud, despite those allegations being investigated and debunked in 64 court cases. Many of those claims were of illegal immigrants, dead people or felons casting ballots.
Why we couldn’t hack it. New voters in Florida need a passport or a driver’s license and a Social Security number. If the identification numbers don’t match the state’s records, the registration is denied.
There can be a delay, but generally, people convicted of felonies are removed from voter rolls. Similarly, death certificates issued by the state are shared with election offices.
Polk County vote-by-mail coordinator Lizbeth Padilla said that sometimes ballots are mailed to people who pass away before the election. But she said if a family member completed the ballot and put it in the mail, chances are the signature on the envelope would not match the voter’s.
Obstacles to stuffing the ballot box: Ballots can only be issued to registered voters — both by mail and at the polls. A voter must request the ballot or check in and present ID.
Some skeptics imagine bad actors helping a candidate by filling out hundreds of ballots. But to actually do that, they would have to identify hundreds of registered voters they could impersonate – who were unlikely to vote in person – and persuasively forge all of those different signatures.
Padilla said it would be nearly impossible to do at scale. She added that she and her colleagues are very good at noticing signatures that don’t match.
Hacking test: Vote-by-mail ballots
Vote-by-mail ballots are a big source of concern for people who mistrust American election security. The use of mail-in ballots increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some people worry that absentee or mail-in ballots could be tampered with and changed to other candidates before they are tallied on Election Day.
Why we couldn’t hack it. The most secure place in Polk County may be the fireproof vault in the locked room at the center of the Supervisor of Elections building, where uncounted vote-by-mail ballots are kept until Election Day.
The room’s location is by design. One must pass through at least four sets of locked, alarmed doors to get there — each requiring a key fob, badge or code with the right permission levels to enter. Cameras record every hallway and secure door. The walk evokes maximum security prison protocols. The vault is like something banks use for massive sums of cash.
Note: LkldNow was not permitted to photograph the door, the room or the vault.
“The most valuable thing we have are voted vote-by-mail ballots that have yet to be counted, because those are irreplaceable,” Edwards said.
There are multiple backups and fail-safes for just about everything else in Polk County elections. But in a typical election, the office will receive 80,000 to 100,000 unique vote-by-mail ballots, some from U.S. citizens stationed across the globe. “You can’t replace it, so that’s why the vault,” Edwards said.
A decentralized election system
Each state’s election laws are slightly different, and counties within each state have their own processes. The diversity and decentralization of these systems make it more difficult to hack elections at any large scale.
No system is perfect and isolated incidents of voter fraud do occur. However, the safeguards and redundancies in Polk County’s system suggest that it would be very difficult to organize a large-scale fraud or alter the outcome of an election.
Edwards noted that the fenced and alarmed Supervisor of Elections office has alligator-filled moats on two sides.
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Many thanks go to LkndNow for getting out ahead of election day rumors of hacking! You guys are the best! And Lori’s comment about ‘alligator filled moats’ is just priceless! It seems like the SOE job is the most complex and visible one of all the elected offices, requiring a huge knowledge base in order to fulfill the duties required. Thank you SOE team for making our elections in Polk safe, accurate and secure!
Although the article did not mention it this responds to a recent presentation before the Polk County Commission by some election deniers from the 912 group that made all kinds of allegations about non-citizens voting etc. etc. Worst yet, the majority of commissioners went along with this foolishness. Commission Chairman Bill Braswell was quoted in an article in The Ledger that he doubted Biden received 15 million more votes in 2020 than Obama received in 2012. The fact is that the 15 million figure was the increase in the number of registered voters in that period. Biden got 12 million of those votes. More important was Braswelll’s insistence that the voting machines could be hacked because they are really connected secretly to the Internet. Must be those Jewish space lasers MJT was talking about. Great article.