Alabama has the right approach to election security (Shaffer/al.com)
By Guest Voices
on September 06, 2017 at 1:20 PM, updated September 07, 2017 at 10:09 AM
By Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (Ret.), Vice President for Operations of the London Center for Policy Research, a New York City-based national security think tank, and the author of the controversial New York Times bestselling "Operation DARK HEART: Spycraft and Special Operations on the Frontlines of Afghanistan".
To stop cyberattacks on voting, America should follow the state's lead on paper ballots
There's no evidence that hacking impacted the 2016 elections. But there's growing evidence that elections in 2018 and 2020 could be at risk. The threat could come from North Korea, Iran, or any of a host of foreign adversaries.
The challenges are getting clearer. In August, Chicago's Board of Elections reported that sensitive information about the city's 1.8 million registered voters was left exposed online for an unknown period. Earlier in the summer, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that foreign agents targeted voting systems in 21 states in the last election. Other news reports found that hackers successfully compromised election technology vendors who program voting systems.
In the fight to secure America's voting systems, Alabama is already employing the most crucial defensive weapon: paper ballots. The transparency and simplicity of the state's system is tough to hack and relatively easy to verify. To guard against a foreign attack on our nation's election systems, we need action to ensure others follow Alabama's example.
***
more: http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/09/alabama_has_the_right_approach.html
We have paper ballots for all the wrong reasons, but I'll take it. 