Oct. 17 (Reuters) – Misinformation online and false claims about voter fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies have severely eroded public confidence in the integrity of the US election. How Americans vote — and the equipment they use — varies widely, and some methods are more vulnerable to attempts to shake that trust.
Heading into the 2022 midterms, election experts say the move in most states to hybrid voting systems — paper ballots counted by electronic machines — could give voters more confidence.
ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES
The United States has invested heavily in paperless electronic voting machines after the controversial 2000 presidential election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush damaged election officials’ confidence in paper ballots.
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In 2006, the proportion of registered voters using paperless machines had soared, although handwritten paper ballots later scanned by electronic tabulators remained the most popular. Read also : This small Japanese town is a true paradise for vintage vending machines. Over the next decade, about a third of all votes were cast on direct-record electronic devices.
These electronic voting machines store the votes in their memory. The lack of a physical document to support electronic voting means election officials have to trust that the machines won’t break down and change or lose a vote, polling stations won’t accidentally change votes, or the machines won’t be hacked, Douglas said. Jones, a retired computer science professor at the University of Iowa who has spent decades studying the use of computers in elections.
In 2016, about 22% of registered voters lived in jurisdictions that used paperless electronic voting machines, according to data from Verified Voting, a US nonprofit organization that promotes the use of secure technology in election administration.
In 2020, less than 9% of registered voters nationwide lived in jurisdictions that used electronic voting machines with no paper trail for all voters — the smallest number since the data was first available in 2006. This shift reflects growing concerns from election officials about foreign interference in elections and the need to have a way to check results.
For the November midterm elections, that number is expected to drop to about 5%, according to data from Verified Voting.
Counties in six states still use paperless voting machines. Most are in solid Republican or Democratic congressional districts, which reduces the chances of contested elections.
However, there are six congressional districts deemed at least somewhat competitive that use electronic voting machines without paper records: the Second, Third, Fifth, and Seventh Districts in New Jersey; Indiana’s First District; and the 15th district of Texas.
PAPER BALLOTS
The United States, like many other countries, mostly uses paper ballots to vote. Read also : Sunburn — The morning read on what’s hot in Florida politics — 9/8/22. Nearly 70% of registered voters live in jurisdictions that primarily use hand-marked paper ballots, according to data from Verified Voting.
About 23% of registered voters live in jurisdictions that primarily use machines called ballots. It allows voters to make their selections electronically and also produce a paper record that can be scanned by another device.
The extent to which voters use digital technology to vote has changed over time. Praised for its ability to count votes quickly and accurately, paperless electronic voting largely declined in popularity in the United States and European countries from the mid-2000s.
Countries have switched to paper as the safest way to monitor their elections and detect possible vote manipulation. Certainly, machines are still an integral part of the electoral process, even when voting on paper ballots. Optical scan tabulators count the results.
Election experts say paper ballots help secure elections because they allow voters to verify how they voted and officials check the results in post-election audits.
Georgia illustrates the importance of a paper ballot. The state has been using paperless voting machines for years. But just before the 2020 presidential election, it replaced its equipment with ballot marking devices, the machines in which voters make their selections electronically and then view them on a printed paper ballot, which is then scanned and tabulated by another machine.
Trump disputed the results, falsely claiming that there were widespread irregularities and fraud in states he lost to Democratic opponent Joe Biden. However, because there were paper ballots, election officials in Georgia were able to count the votes by hand and confirm that Biden had indeed won the state.
VOTE-TABULATING SYSTEMS
The urge for paper does not mean that machines will disappear from the polling stations. Almost all machines still use machines to classify the paper ballots. This may interest you : Take measures to eliminate criminals from politics: Allahabad HC to ECI. Trump and his allies falsely claim that tabulators were manipulated in some races of 2020 to turn votes from Trump to Biden.
They are insisting that the machines be dumped entirely and that the ballots be counted by hand, which election officials say is a logistical non-starter. The claims have been thoroughly investigated and debunked.
Still, allegations of voter fraud have sowed widespread mistrust in elections, with an ABC/Ipsos poll in January showing that only about 20% of the American public has great confidence in the electoral system.
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Reporting by Matt Zdun; adaptation by Ross Colvin, Scott Malone
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