In these times of heightened concerns about voting accuracy, voter fraud and election safety from hackers, it’s good to know that local election officials are taking steps to ensure that election results are accurate and verifiable.
A tool that Bartholomew County is beginning to use, and that has been used by other counties across the country, is the voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT). It’s an independent verification system that is added to voting machines that prints and stores paper copies of electronic voting records.
The intended benefits of the VVPAT system are safeguarding against possible election fraud and voting machine malfunctions, ensuring voters are using voting machines correctly, and allowing election officials to audit votes cast electronically, if needed.
Currently, Bartholomew County election officials can compare electronic poll books at voting centers with the total number of votes cast at each voting machine. However, voting machines in Bartholomew County have no paper record of each individual vote cast, and only mail-in paper ballots can be audited for recounts.
By 2029, all voting machines statewide must use VVPAT. Bartholomew County plans to use VVPAT on at least four voting machines during early voting at Donner Center. This gives the county a start on ensuring that VVPAT is added to all 137 of its electronic voting machines.
We’re glad to see that county election officials are moving ahead now with adding VVPAT to some of its voting machines, and look forward to the county adding it to the rest of the machines in the near future.
