Election fact-checking: How voting machines work and why they’re hard to hack

As Americans go to the polls Election dayit is vital to trust that their votes will be counted accurately and that the democratic process is protected from interference, experts say.

But with early voting underway and just days before voting closes in the 2024 presidential election, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the security of voting machines are looming over the race for the White House.

In the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump caused some distrust in the electoral system, which some Republicans, supporters and the media claimed.

Despite the debunking of voting machine conspiracy theories such as internet hacking and widespread physical tampering, misinformation about the democratic process is pervasive on social media and is the basis for some recent lawsuits filed by RNC-affiliated groups in key states.

Elon Musk, a major Trump supporter and owner of Company X, recently continued to fire up fake voting machines, telling a crowd at a town hall in Pennsylvania, “The last thing I would do is trust a computer program because it’s too easy to hack.” Musk said.

However, multiple probes into claims of fraud in the 2020 election and a landmark defamation lawsuit between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News have dismissed conspiracy theories about vote-rigging and Trump’s claims that he won the election over President Joe Biden.

In April 2023, Dominion reached a nearly $800 million settlement with Fox for spreading false theories on conservative news stations’ platforms.

In addition, state and federal courts have dismissed more than 60 lawsuits in six states from Trump and his allies seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“These statements don’t inspire any credibility,” Lauren Cristella, president of the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan government watchdog in Philadelphia, told ABC News.

“I am confident that our elections are free, fair, secure and credible, and that the systems that we have in place, the checks and balances that we have in place, are working,” Cristella added.

So how do voting machines work? And what safeguards are in place from the federal level down to the community level to ensure that every vote is counted and free from tampering?

Before Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris compete for the American vote on Nov. 5, experts said understanding the security measures that follow ballots from the polls to the count can bring clarity and comfort to the process.

What voting machines are used in elections?

While election officials use technology to register voters, count votes and, in some cases, cast ballots, the system is largely centered around paper ballots.

“Almost everywhere across the country, about 98 percent of voters will have a paper record of their vote when they vote,” Derek Tisler, who is an adviser to the Brennan Center for Elections and Govt. This is reported by ABC News.

According to the MIT Election Laboratory, five types of voting machines have historically been used in the United States: manual paper counting machines, mechanical lever machines, punch card machines, scanned paper ballots, and electronic direct recording devices.

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Ahead of the 2024 election, optical scanning systems for paper ballots are widely used to count physical votes on ballots, a technology comparable to that used for a standardized test, according to MIT.

Voters mark their ballots in a private voting booth, which are then scanned as they are placed in the box and the votes are tallied at the end of the day.

Electronic direct recording systems use buttons or a touch screen to record votes, often with paper ballots for audit or recount.

And ballot marking devices and systems that are fully electronic are primarily used to accommodate voters with disabilities.

There are 10 different manufacturers of voting systems that have been tested and approved by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), including Clear Ballet, Dominion Voting Systems, and Election Systems. & software (ES&S) to name a few.

According to the EAC, the path to approval includes hardware stress tests and software vulnerability checks to ensure machines have the basic functionality, availability and security capabilities required for these systems.

“That’s why every voting system, including ours, goes through a certification process at accredited testing labs,” Chip Trowbridge, Clear Ballot’s chief technology officer, told ABC News.

“Every change, no matter how big or small, whether it’s a source code or a software change, has to be tested,” Trowbridge said.

Individual states and local jurisdictions also have certification processes for voting machine manufacturers that vary by location, Trowbridge said.

What security measures are in place to protect voting machines?

According to Ted Allen, a professor of integrated systems engineering at Ohio State University and a member of the MIT Election Lab, one of the first lines of defense against tampering is the physical security of voting machines.

In the run-up to Election Day and after voting, the machines are stored in secure locations with limited access to election officials, Allen told ABC News.

Voting machines are under constant surveillance at polling stations, Allen said, and election officials and security personnel have been trained to prevent unauthorized access.

“The paper, the chain of custody of the equipment and the chain of custody of the ballots in general are very carefully studied and monitored,” Allen said.

However, in the 2020 election, several individuals were accused of tampering with voting machines.

Tina Peters, a Republican election official in Colorado, was sentenced to nine years in prison for violating the security of the district’s election system after she was inspired by false and unsubstantiated claims of vote fraud.

She was convicted of giving an individual access to the election software she used for her constituency. Screenshots of the software appeared on the right sites.

Georgia bailiff Scott Hall has been indicted on charges of allegedly tampering with voting equipment after the 2020 election in Coffee County.

Hall and several of his co-defendants allegedly “conspired to intentionally interfere” with the results of the 2020 election and “unlawfully” access voting machines to obtain data, including ballot images.

Hall pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiracy to intentionally interfere with election duties. He will receive probation and has agreed to testify in the future, including at the trial of other defendants.

While no system is ever completely impervious to threats, voting machines are protected by a number of technical and procedural measures that make them extremely difficult to hack.

Electoral systems spokesman & Software, Inc., told ABC News that in addition to physical controls, the company’s voting equipment follows secure practices for creating, transmitting and storing critical election files and data.

According to ES, the use of encryption and digital signatures for data, cryptographic modules that comply with the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), and the creation of encrypted USB flash drives programmed for certain elections prevent tampering by unauthorized agents.&S.

Do the voting machines connect to the Internet?

A key safeguard that makes voting machines difficult to hack is the lack of internet access during the voting process.

According to Trowbridge, the machines used to scan ballots at the polls cannot have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio or network connectivity at all.

“These systems absolutely cannot have any network,” Trowbridge said. “In fact, if you look at the Clear Ballot machines, the only wire that comes out of them is the power cord.”

According to Trowbridge, the central scanning equipment is networked, but the technology runs on an air gap network that is completely separated from the public Internet.

According to him, this significantly reduces the risk of remote hacking or unauthorized access from external sources.

Even if a hacker were to try to gain access to a voting machine, he would have to physically tamper with the machine itself, which may be more difficult due to physical security measures.

Looking ahead to Nov. 5, Derek Tisler emphasized that there are always checks and balances in the process to make sure there is no one person who can disrupt anything.

“Public trust is very important to the democratic process, and that’s why elections are transparent,” Tisler said.