Here’s a glimpse of the scene at Cross Keys, where technical issues have ground voting to a standstill and officials have run out of provisional ballots. #gapol pic.twitter.com/XtezH1Qyrm

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) June 9, 2020

The issues have led to many people facing long waits in lines to cast their votes. But even the provisional ballot system isn’t sufficient, as some locations quickly ran out of them. “If you are in line, PLEASE do not allow your vote to be suppressed,” Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms wrote on Twitter. “PLEASE stay in line. They should offer you a provisional ballot if the machines are not working.” Engadget has contacted the Georgia secretary of state office, which oversees local elections, for comment.

Georgia’s election security has faced intense scrutiny in recent years. Governor Brian Kemp came under fire over how he handled elections during his time as secretary of state, including accusations that he engaged in voter suppression and abused his power to steal the 2018 gubernatorial election. Last year, a federal judge ordered Georgia to update its outdated machines for the 2020 election cycle. Both of the state’s Senate seats are on the line this year.

A number of states have faced serious technical issues during this primary season. On Super Tuesday in early March, many people ran into problems with new voting machines in Los Angeles. In Iowa, an app designed to report caucus results was a complete failure. An HBO documentary that premiered in March highlighted just some of the many critical problems with America’s voting machines and fragile election system.

While the matter is of grave concern across the country, Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections delves into problems with some specific machines and issues in certain states. For instance, back in 2005, security researcher Harri Hursti (a key figure in the film) demonstrated a memory card exploit that could alter votes on an optical scan voting machine. Those Diebold machines are still in operation in 20 states and are slated for use in November, the filmmakers note.

Elsewhere, a judge banned Georgia from continuing to use the vulnerable systems it had in place for well over a decade. In the wake of the contentious 2018 gubernatorial election, officials had new machines in place for this month’s presidential primary. While the replacements can print paper ballots, which are important for proper vote auditing, they’re still very much vulnerable as they run on Windows 7 — for which Microsoft recently ended support.

We also hear from an Indian hacker who says he was able to gain full access to Alaska’s system, including live voting data, during the 2016 presidential election. He claims he’d have been able to remove a candidate from the ballot or change any vote, but decided not to for fear of triggering some kind of alarm.

The documentary adeptly skirts the line between spelling out specific vulnerabilities and making the problems clear enough for the less technically-minded among us. It touches on many other issues related to election security, such as remote access and the case of the NSA whistleblower Reality Winner and some prominent figures weigh in, including recent presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar.

The film is effective in hammering home its message about the technical issues that pervade many US polling machines. It’s not much of a spoiler to reveal its main call-to-action: ask for a paper ballot if you’re not completely certain that your district’s electronic system is secure. Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections premieres at 9PM ET on HBO, HBO Now and HBO Go.

“Georgia’s current voting equipment, software, election and voter databases, are antiquated, seriously flawed, and vulnerable to failure, breach, contamination, and attack,” she wrote in her ruling. “The long and twisting saga of Georgia’s non-auditable DRE/GEMS voting system — running on software of almost two decades vintage with well-known flaws and vulnerabilities and limited cybersecurity — is finally headed towards its conclusion.”

Georgia is still using direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines with hardware and software that are well over a decade old. Even as far back as 2006, security researchers found significant flaws with the systems, which were serious enough that California decertified them for state elections.

While Georgia stuck with them until now, it already planned to send the machines out to pasture and bring in ballot-marking machines. It aims to have the new systems in place in time for the presidential primary on March 24th. However, there were concerns there might be delays in rolling out the new machines, and that the state would revert to its old touchscreen setup for the primary and possibly the presidential election in November.

Totenberg’s ruling blocks such a possibility. If Georgia can’t set up the replacement machines in time for the primary or the election, it’ll have to rely entirely on paper ballots.

A group of voters in the state, along with election integrity advocates, sued the secretary of state’s office in 2017, on the basis that the DRE machines were vulnerable to hacking. Totenberg had denied a motion to prohibit their use in the 2018 midterms. However, with regards to the latest motion, voters told the court the machines registered their votes incorrectly during last year’s tight gubernatorial election.

Georgia plans to test the new systems in a few cities during this year’s elections. However, the incoming voting machines are controversial too. Lawsuit plaintiffs say they have many of the same security vulnerabilities as the DRE system. The newer machines print out a paper ballot that includes a readout of the voter’s selection and a QR code. But because a scanner reads the code, and not plain text, voters will have to trust it faithfully represents their intended vote.

Election security, of course, will be a critical topic of discussion as the 2020 election season picks up pace, given widespread evidence that Russia hacked voter databases and systems, and attempted to manipulate the 2016 presidential poll.

Image: AP Photo/Mike Stewart