It has never been more important for election officials to have best practices in place when election technology fails
Dear John,
After all of the chaos surrounding the results of the Iowa caucuses last week, one thing remains clear - it has never been more important for election officials to have best practices in place when election technology fails. Verified Voting has always advocated against using vulnerable technology in our elections, especially ones that rely on the internet. But the Iowa caucuses also showed that paper records are the best recovery plan to tally election results. Verified Voting President Marian K. Schneider’s statement, which was covered in multiple national news outlets - including Wired, LA Times, POLITICO, Reuters, and Bloomberg - said it best:
“The situation with Iowa’s caucus reveals the risks associated with technology, in this case with a mobile app, but more importantly that there needs to be a low tech solution in order to recover from technological failures — no matter the cause. There needs to be a way to monitor, detect, respond and recover. It’s clear that mobile apps are not ready for prime time, but thankfully Iowa has paper records of their vote totals and will be able to release results from those records.”
Verified Voting is committed to one goal - ensuring our country’s voting systems are resilient and have a way of recovering from attacks: both real-world tampering, and those designed to sow distrust in the election results. We’ve seen what happened with the confusion surrounding the Iowa caucus results, and there could be more issues to come this year. Verified Voting’s goal is within reach, but we need your help to move as many states as possible to adopt best practices before Election Day. Help us by donating to our Validating 2020 campaign today.
