Missouri officials assure election security during early voting for midterms
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Missouri officials are reassuring voters of election security ahead of next week’s midterm election.
“There’s a number of safeguards that we have in place, not just for the security of the machines, but also the security of the ballots,” Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon said. “We have a chain of custody on each of the ballots that we have that get delivered to the polling places and our election judge teams sign off on them, so there’s always a bipartisan custodian over our ballots at the polling place, and then also as they’re being returned back to our office.”
According to a Pew Research Study, roughly half of voters are confident that U.S. election systems are free from hacking and other technological threats. Republicans were 47% confident in the election systems, while Democratic voters were 60% confident.
According to Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, all voting machines, or tabulators, are publicly tested and then sealed before and after election day. The machines are also required to produce a paper trail of ballots and are not connected to the internet.
“We have election judges, bipartisan teams come in to make a test stack of ballots and they run those through each of the machines and then we do a hand count to make sure that they count correctly,” Lennon said.
Lennon adds the tabulators have several locks to secure the bin where the ballots are organized. Tape is also placed over the locked section that houses a USB with the record of ballots cast.
“On Election Night, our election judge supervisors bring back the physical ballots and the little USB drive that has all of the data of those ballots back to our office,” Lennon said. “We put it into our standalone computer that’s also not connected to the Internet, and it tabulates and accumulates all of the results.”
The tablet ballot markers are also not connected to the internet. They allow voters with accessibility or mobility needs to mark their ballots electronically, with the printed, filled-out paper ballot then submitted to the tabulator. The device also prevents voters from picking more than one candidate.
Election results are also audited by local election officials before results are released. Every county additionally has its own voting system.
Lennon reports Boone County hand counts a section of their votes before announcing election results.
“After Election Day, we have bipartisan teams of election judges come out, they take all the ballots that were cast from a randomly selected 5% of our polling places, and they hand count them to match what the results that came out of the electronic tabulators were on election night,” Lennon said.
According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, voter registration data is held in a secure database with the Secretary of State that follows routine backups and is frequently monitored. Lennon adds that the database is on a VPN. Boone County additionally uses a copy of the voter registration list when checking in voters or in the case that the storage system fails.
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