Almost three weeks after Election Day, Wisconsin is getting ready to recount its votes, and Pennsylvania and Michigan may soon follow suit. Green Party candidate Jill Stein has raised over $6 million to fund the effort, saying fears of a hacked election couldn’t be dismissed in light of earlier hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign staff. Hillary Clinton’s team signed on to the recount campaign over the weekend, citing similar concerns.
Many are still skeptical. Although Trump won Wisconsin by just over 25,000 votes, there’s still no technical evidence of vote-tampering and the results are generally consistent with polling and demographic data. As a result, it’s extremely unlikely that a few hacked precincts could have tipped the scales. At the same time, even the suggestion of an audit has set off political chaos, as President-elect Trump responded with unfounded allegations that millions of votes had been cast illegally.
The most secure election system is one where audits are routine
From afar, the political fallout makes sense. After any election, the winning side looks to claim a mandate while the losing side looks to deny one. Auditing votes has become another way to wage that fight, with Stein emphasizing previous foreign interference in the election and Trump responding with more exaggerated claims of fraud. But while the political pushback against the recount might have been predictable, it does real damage to the long-term security of the election system. Auditing a precinct’s votes — specifically, comparing the paper ballots to the electronic count — is one of the best protections we have against machines that are often still vulnerable to compromise. The most secure election system is one where audits are routine, public, and completely devoid of news value.
There are already a number of systems in place to protect voting machines, and as I wrote before the election, those systems generally work. It would be very difficult for a foreign adversary to compromise a voting machine, and if they did, there would be ample evidence that it had happened. Still, the barriers to public paper auditing mean we’re not taking advantage of some of the system’s strongest protections.