Several of Bartholomew County’s electronic voting machines will start using a new verification system that leaves a paper record of each electronic ballot cast.
At least four of the county’s 137 electronic voting machines at the Donner Center will be equipped with a voter-verifiable paper audit trail, or VVPAT, for early voting in October as part of a statewide effort to implement new security measures on electronic voting machines, said Bartholomew County Clerk Jay Phelps.
County election officials expect two additional voting machines at the Bartholomew County Courthouse to use VVPATs for early voting this fall.
A VVPAT is an independent verification system added to electronic voting machines that prints and stores paper copies of electronic voting records to safeguard against possible election fraud and voting machine malfunctions, including making sure that voters use the voting machines correctly and allow election officials to audit votes cast electronically.
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“The main difference is for recount purposes,” Phelps said. “Right now, as far as our voting machines go, you can’t do a recount on them because there’s no paper trail.”
Currently, only mail-in paper ballots in Bartholomew County can be audited for recounts, Phelps said. Though county election officials can compare electronic poll books at voting centers with the total number of votes cast on each voting machine, they have no paper record of each individual vote cast, Phelps said. Mail-in paper ballots represented, on average, 5% of the total votes cast during the previous four general elections, according to county public records.
Phelps said the goal is to use the VVPATs in the most popular voting locations. Early voting locations were selected because around half of voters in Bartholomew County cast their ballots during early voting, Phelps said.
However, not a whole lot will change for voters, Phelps said.
Voters will still use the same voting machines they are accustomed to, but a separate machine will be installed on them to print a paper record of each vote cast and store them in a secure folder that will be housed in the Bartholomew County Voter Registration and Election Office for two years, Phelps said. The voter is not identified on the paper, only the votes that were cast.
When voters press the red button on the voting machine to confirm their vote, a slip of paper will print out with the candidates they selected. Voters will then be able to verify that the slip of paper accurately reflects who they voted for, Phelps said. If the slip of paper is correct, voters will press another button on the machine to confirm. If it is not correct, voters can still make changes.
County election officials will still tally votes the same way they did before, but will have paper records of each individual vote cast on those machines to conduct a recount or to verify the accuracy of the machines, Phelps said.
Many election experts in recent years have recommended the use of VVPATs, specifically raising concerns about how votes are stored in the computer memory of direct-record electronic voting machines.
Around half of Indiana counties, including Bartholomew County, use direct-record electronic voting machines, according to the Indiana Department of State. Bartholomew County is one of 29 counties in the state that use the MicroVote Infinity 4.1 direct-recording electronic voting machine, according to public records obtained from the Indiana Election Commission.
A direct record electronic voting system uses software to record votes directly into computer memory without using a paper ballot, according to the National Conference of Legislators. Some, but not all, direct record electronic voting systems leave a paper trail.
On Monday, the Indiana Election Commission approved the first VVPAT for electronic voting systems in the state, but will only provide funding for 10% of electronic voting equipment with a VVPAT, according to a press release from the Indiana Secretary of State’s office. By 2029 all electronic voting machines in the state will be required to use a VVPAT, the release states.
In the 2016 presidential election, approximately one out of every three DRE electronic voting machines used a VVPAT, according to the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that collects and analyzes U.S. election data.
Indiana, for its part, ranks among the bottom of all states and the District of Columbia in terms of election security, according to a 2018 study by the Center for American Progress.
The study looked at, among other things, cybersecurity for voter registration systems, voter-verified paper audit trails and post-election audits. The Hoosier State was one of two states that received an overall grade of “F” for, in large part, permitting the use of voting machines that do not provide a paper record of individual votes, the study states.
“Indiana allows voting using machines that do not provide a paper record and fails to mandate robust post-election audits that test the accuracy of election outcomes, which leaves the state susceptible to hacking and manipulation by sophisticated nation-states,” the Center for American Progress report states.
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At least four electronic voting machines in Bartholomew County will start using a new verification system that leaves a paper record of each electronic ballot cast.
The system voter-verifiable paper audit trail, or VVPAT, is an independent verification system added to electronic voting machines that prints and stores paper copies of electronic voting records to safeguard against possible election fraud and voting machine malfunctions, ensure that voters cast their ballots correctly and allow election officials to audit votes cast electronically.
Voters will still use the same voting machines they are accustomed to, but a separate machine will be installed on them to print a paper record of each vote cast and store them in a secure folder that will be housed in the Bartholomew County Voter Registration and Election Office for two years.
When voters press the red button on the voting machine to confirm their vote, a slip of paper will print out with the candidates they selected. Voters will then be able to verify that the slip of paper accurately reflects who they voted for. If the slip of paper is correct, voters will press another button on the machine to confirm. If it is not correct, voters can still make changes.
Bartholomew County uses the MicroVote Infinity 4.1 direct-recording electronic voting machine.
Visit microvote.com for more information.
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