Cyber Security Professionals reveal the issues around supply chain vulnerabilities for what’s inside the machines that are used for voting in America.
I am in the minority, but as a retired Cyber Security professional I think we can have electronic voting that is far more secure than the mail in ballots, which are totally unsecure. The problem with paper ballots is they often require a second party to be involved in the counting or tabulation. If you mail a ballot, there may be dozens of people handling your ballot before it is tabulated. Anyone of those people could alter or destroy your vote.
You would never follow a process like this with cash. In fact, when ATMs were first deployed by banks, it took a long time for people to get comfortable with the idea of depositing cash in the machines. And until the process was refined, there were plenty of examples of fraud, by depositors and by bank employees.
Banks transfer trillions of dollars every single day all electronically and often without any paper involved in the process. The amount of fraud in this system is actually very small and what there is usually involved error of end users, like allowing the passwords to get hacked. Even so, banks keep detailed electronics records for proofing end of day transfer amounts they use to detect any fraud in the system. I know because I designed a funds transfer system for a major global bank.
If we want a secure system, we should use electronic voting machines that are not connected to the internet, where a voter uses and interface that allows him to make his candidate selections and record them. The machine can be hardened to ensure those vote totals are not modified. Of course, the vulnerability in this process is knowing the voter, or authenticating his identity and entitlement to vote. This could be rectified with voter ID.
It does not have to be complicated. But the problem in the US is there is no will to secure the voting process. In fact, with early voting, mail-in ballots, no signature verification, no voter ID, etc. the system is designed to allow fraud to occur AND go undetected.