Voting Machines Have A PR Problem
Voting has never really been the same since George Bush beat Al Gore. It hasn’t just been the whole process that has been under the spotlight, but the technology that underpins it as well. Who can forget hanging chads?
At one point the technology being used to screen out voters came under fire, because of the high percentage of mistakes that were being made especially with black voters, that was deregistering them from being able to vote, or mistaking them for people with similar names and criminal records.
This last election everything was about Russia and the hacking of the election. Understandably the security of the voting machines has come under scrutiny. One of the people at the forefront of the push for better security is Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who issued a list of 8 questions to voting machine manufacturers to assess just how well they were responding in light of the recent 2016 election, and what the preparedness was for any potential attacks in the future.
Dominion Voting, Election Systems & Software, Five Cedars Group, Hart InterCivic, MicroVote and Unisyn Voting Solutions, and voting system test labs V&V and SLI Compliance have all been asked to respond to the questions by October 31st.
It’s an important thing to get the technology working correctly and to instill faith in both the voting machines and by extension the integrity of the election itself. Accusations have been made that this is the very thing that Vladimir Putin seeks to destabilize, and that this is something he has done across Europe as well, in an effort to promote chaos in the countries of his opponents, while consolidating his own power back home.
Getting straight answers from these companies, and getting an action plan to shore up any security that is working, and to identify any weak links in the chain, is great PR, both for Wyden and the companies. They can then work out a plan to lock down the whole operation and give the people and the government exactly what they want — an unimpeachable election and election process.
