Last year, ESS admitted to putting
remote access capabilities into their voting systems. Now it turns out that VR Systems opened up remote access to their systems as well. Further, as
Politico reports, it appears the Russians infiltrated VR Systems itself.
Now before things digress, this is the disclaimer that I am not suggesting anything untoward happened in 2016.
But the argument we often here is the system cannot be hacked. Well it turns out our vendors are installing remote access and not telling anyone. I do somewhat get the reasoning, how can someone like VR Systems have enough people trained and staged in every county that buys their system to troubleshoot election day problems. It isn't going to happen.
But that is a secondary concern, paper ballots can replace machines that have to be brought down. But IF someone hacks the system there is no good recovery mechanism. Anything on the internet can be hacked. Frankly, probably has been hacked to some extent if contains interesting information to foreign powers or the NSA.
I get that many of us hate the idea of a top down system. But what we have isn't working. To major suppliers have now admitted to doing exactly what they said they would not do. This has invalidated the entire claim that "the system is safe because it is not reachable" invalid. We need to get these systems under control before there is a hacking. Let me ask this. Let's suppose in 2020 a candidate wins and then it is discovered massive hacking occurred. Look at the constitution and tell me what remedies are listed?