The U.S. Voting System Remains Vulnerable 6 Months Before Election Day. What Now?
As America heads toward the 2018 midterms, there's an elephant in the voting booth.
Despite improvements since Russia's attack on the 2016 presidential race, the U.S. elections infrastructure is vulnerable — and will remain so in November.
Cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier laid out the problem to an overflowing room full of election directors and secretaries of state — people charged with running and securing elections — at a conference at Harvard University this spring.
"Computers are basically insecure," said Schneier. "Voting systems are not magical in any way. They are computers."
Even though most states have moved away from voting equipment that does not produce a paper trail, when experts talk about "voting systems," that phrase encompasses the entire process of voting: how citizens register to vote, how they find their polling places,
