a big pen it is a round stick medium
that's all University of Michigan
graduate student Matt Bernhard needs to
break into this voting machine there we
go these machines are in use in 20
states behind the door is the prize the
memory card where votes are stored if
you are so inclined you could come into
the voter booth to vote pop out the
memory card put your own in install some
malware not only that but we were able
to develop a voting machine virus that
would silently spread from machine to
machine going from a single point of
infection to compromised an entire
County maybe even an entire state Alex
Halderman is a computer science
professor at the University of Michigan
he's been studying electronic voting
machines for more than a decade when I
started working in election systems the
concern was somewhat academic that
someone could hack in and tamper with
votes but over the last 10 years the
rise of nation-state attackers has
really upped the ante and attackers
don't have to steal votes to taint an
election yet in 2014 in Ukraine
attackers linked to Russia hacked into
the central election accounting system
and tried to make it so they'd report
the wrong results in order to discredit
the election that's a realistic threat
here - or hackers could tamper with
voter rolls preventing registered voters
from casting ballots we're in the
process of test fitting right here and
Terry Burton heads the Board of
Elections in Wood County Ohio it's his
job to be sure boating goes smoothly
here one key safeguard these machines
keep a paper copy of how the voter voted
so if there's ever any question of you
know is that memory card good is you
know is it recording correctly the voter
had an opportunity to look at the paper
copy
we can look paper copy and verify that
that member
the electronic information is correct
how often voters check the paper copy is
unclear and a quarter of voters
nationwide will cast ballots on machines
that have no paper backup but it would
be hard to hack all the different kinds
of machines in use across the country so
experts say any effects would likely be
modest and localized Burton is not too
worried could someone do things to
interrupt Election Day yes they probably
could make my day a very long day
but we feel confident that we could get
the voters that are registered and are
appropriately registered voted I just
hope the election isn't closed but polls
in Ohio and some other battleground
states
are closed as Election Day nears Steve
Baragona
VOA news Bowling Green Ohio