Security researchers say rapid advances in\u00a0artificial intelligence\u00a0are making it more critical to address a flaw in Georgia\u2019s voting equipment that can allow voters to be matched to their ballots after they have been cast.<\/p>\n
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The\u00a0system\u2019s vulnerability\u00a0has been drawing increased attention, with election security advocates criticizing state election officials for failing to fix it before the November elections. Georgia election officials say they have taken steps to address the potential harm, but some advocates say the state is not going far enough.<\/p>\n
The vulnerability does not allow votes to be changed or cast doubt on election results, but it could let someone see how others voted. That is important because ballot secrecy is a fundamental right under the state constitution and violations could create an opening for legal challenges.<\/p>\n
While the flaw has been known for a few years, the widespread adoption of AI tools and the blistering pace of its sophistication have election security experts raising alarms.<\/p>\n
This is \u201ca bit of a wake-up call because it illustrates how much more easily vulnerabilities can be exploited now that AI can do all of the technical work for you,\u201d said J. Alex Halderman, a voting technology specialist at the University of Michigan who was part of the team that exposed the flaw.<\/p>\n
Other jurisdictions across the country use the same voting equipment made by Dominion Voting Systems, a company that has since been sold and renamed Liberty Vote. But many have applied a software update to fix the flaw, and some other states do not allow the public release of records that are needed to exploit it, said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group focused on election technology.<\/p>\n
Georgia, a presidential battleground with one of the nation\u2019s most closely watched U.S. Senate races this year, is the only place where the system is used statewide. Lindeman said that, combined with an open records law that has allowed access to key documents, creates a \u201cperfect storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really embarrassing that this is still a possibility,\u201d Lindeman said.<\/p>\n
How does voting work in Georgia?<\/h4>\n
Georgia voters make their selections on touchscreen voting machines that print paper ballots voters insert into scanners to tally the votes.<\/p>\n
Such cast-vote records detail the votes from each ballot. Those records and electronic ballot images created by the scanners are randomized. But the software flaw allows them to be put back in the order they were cast, according to a report by researchers who discovered it in 2022.<\/p>\n
Along with other publicly available data, that information could be used to match voters to their ballots, the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n
Max Springer, a Princeton University researcher who was not involved in the original research and studies AI, said he gave a publicly available AI assistant that research. He said it was able to reverse the shuffling of electronic ballot records from Georgia\u2019s May primary and then tell him what other records it would need to match names to ballots.<\/p>\n
He then gave the AI assistant the early voting list for the counties he examined and the cast-vote record file, which could be obtained through a public records request. It was able to create \u201cbuckets of ballots and potential voters,\u201d he wrote in a blog post. In many instances, that made it possible to match voters to their ballots.<\/p>\n
In cases where ambiguity remained, he wrote, he got the public audit log for the ballot scanners and precinct check-in records and was able to match most ballots to specific voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI coding tools are essentially supercharging laymen people to exploit vulnerabilities,\u201d Springer said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Why does ballot secrecy matter?<\/h4>\n
Georgia\u2019s Constitution says elections \u201cshall be by secret ballot\u201d and state law requires voting machines to \u201cpermit voting in absolute secrecy so that no person can see or know any other elector\u2019s votes.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lack of ballot secrecy can make it easier to buy or sell votes and increase the danger of coercion to vote a certain way by family members, political organizations, employers or government officials. It also is information that could be invaluable to political campaigns.<\/p>\n
Gabriel Sterling, special projects manager in the secretary of state\u2019s office, pushed back on the concerns. He said it would be easier to use mail ballots if vote-buying or coercion was the goal and that it likely would be cheaper for campaigns to just increase outreach to voters who fit a certain profile than try to identify voters this way.<\/p>\n
State Election Board member Salleigh Grubbs proposed a rule during the board\u2019s August meeting that would have required the secretary of state\u2019s office to apply the software update recommended by the manufacturer by Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach (voter) has one vote, and no one is entitled to know how it was cast,\u201d Grubbs said. \u201cThat privacy protects more than the individual voter. It protects the integrity of the entire election.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a letter to the election board, an agency lawyer argued that the update has not been certified by the secretary of state, the implementation would take months and the legislature has not provided necessary funding. The board rejected Grubbs\u2019 proposal. Some members said they did not believe they had the authority to order the secretary of state to act and they raised concerns about the short timeline before the November midterms.<\/p>\n
Board member Sara Tindall Ghazal, who voted against the proposal, said it is \u201cintensely frustrating\u201d that the software update has not been applied. But she pointed out that it is a felony to reveal how someone voted, which should serve as a deterrent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate the fact that it\u2019s even physically possible, but there are very, very severe penalties if somebody were to actually do this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s being done?<\/h4>\n
The secretary of state\u2019s office sent guidance to county election officials instructing them to refer open records requests for certain records to the secretary of state\u2019s office. It will release them with the problematic information blacked out and decline to release other information and documents.<\/p>\n
Sterling said the office is working with a vendor to scramble the original order of ballot images and cast-vote records before they are made public. Halderman said that precaution would be necessary to keep someone from reconstructing the order.<\/p>\n
While some other jurisdictions have applied the software update that reportedly fixes the problem, some have done what Georgia is now trying to do by restricting public access to the records needed to exploit the flaw.<\/p>\n
Marilyn Marks is executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, which advocates for election transparency and security and raised the alarm about the vulnerability. She argued that withholding documents is not the solution and that steps need to be taken to ensure ballots cannot be traced to voters in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Georgia\u2019s election records contain identifiers that can be used to trace ballots to voters, the only legal and acceptable answer is to stop recording that information \u2014 not restrict public access to sensitive unlawful information to insiders and commercial vendors,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
With time growing short before the elections, Marks said a workable interim solution would be to collect ballots in locked boxes at precincts and then shuffle and scan them at a central tabulating center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#exploit #flaw #Georgias #voting #equipment #match #voters #ballots<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n