Will Georgia's voting system be secure in 2024?
ATLANTA - Critics are calling out the state’s plan to wait until after the 2024 presidential election to install a software update on voting equipment, but election leaders say it’s just not feasible. It all comes down to security.
A judge recently unsealed two reports on both sides of the issue. One report by a University of Michigan professor finds the state’s dominion voting system has critical vulnerabilities. Another by a corporation analyzing the security of elections found the machines secure.
"We’re not really delaying it, we’re doing it in a responsible way," said Georgia Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling.
Sterling says the decision to delay the voting machine software updates was done with security in mind.
"The presidential preference primary is March 12, which means 49 days before that. We have to get the overseas, the UOCAVA, the military ballots out the door, so that’s in December," said Sterling. "When balancing the risks, it is the safer thing to use the very secure system we have now with all of the processes and procedures we have. It was secure in 2020, it was secure in 2022, it will be secure in 2024."
On Wednesday a newly released report by the University of Michigan professor J. Alex Halderman says Georgia’s system has critical vulnerabilities that put votes at risk laying out several possible scenarios, but another by the group MITRE found it’s not likely those scenarios would occur.
"In order for the attacks that are outlined here to actually work, it would take thousands of people going to hundreds of locations doing actions over a long period of time and no one noticing," Sterling said.
Halderman called MITRE‘s analysis wrong because it assumes "safe and controlled access", citing an alleged incident in Coffee County in 2021 where a team hired by supporters of former President Donald Trump accessed voting equipment. But Sterling says the systems are secure.
"The equipment in question in Coffee County has been taken out of service. We’re reviewing that as part of the court case... we do processes and procedures and train on security all the time," said Sterling. "In the real world, these things can’t happen because we have audits. We have post-election reviews to make sure that the software is the same software it was before."