Election security

Electronic election fraud is a real danger

The Aug. 7 Outlook essay “It’s really hard, actually, to rig an election” correctly pointed out that voter fraud is largely a myth used to justify disenfranchising voters. But it failed to properly address the danger of electronic vote rigging.

Putting aside the evidence from activists and statisticians to the contrary, the essay’s claim is impossible to make. If electronic voting machines were changing votes, it would be hidden. When we vote on a machine or feed our ballots into a scanner, we’re trusting it to report the correct vote counts. If it reports another number, we can’t tell unless we audit the paper record. With more than a dozen states lacking full paper records, and many states lacking proper audit procedures, fraud could easily occur without being found out. We can debate how likely electronic election fraud is. But dismissing it because it hasn’t been caught shows a misunderstanding of the issue.