Securing Election Infrastructure with Hand-Marked Paper Ballots

Abstract

American democracy is critically threatened by the use of insecure voting systems. Many existing electronic voting machines have malfunctioned during recent elections, and many are also vulnerable to hacking (Appel et al. 2019, Blaze et al. 2019, Blaze 2020). Most states have switched to secure, hand-marked paper ballots, but roughly 30% of Americans will continue to vote using vulnerable voting machines in 2020 (Cordova et al. 2019, Bajak 2020). While Congress allocated $380 million in 2018 and $425 million in 2020 to improve election security, these funds were neither targeted at nor sufficient for replacing all electronic voting machines. We propose that Congress (1) allocate $110 million exclusively for transitioning away from electronic voting machines and (2) prohibit the use of federal funds for purchasing voting systems that do not primarily use hand-marked paper ballots. This one-time transition cost is much smaller than even annual expenditures on other critical infrastructure (Copeland 2010; Halderman 2019). Replacing electronic voting machines with hand-marked paper ballots is the most affordable and secure option.

Blockchain Technology Implementation on Simple Microcontroller Based Ballots System

“…Ballots is one of the most important things to keep it's integrity and security, because it can change the course of decision making whether it's in a small organization level or a whole nation [1]. But with every election, paper-based ballots are still used due to it is being less likely to be hacked compared to a digital based ballots [2][3] [4]. The downsides of still using paper-based ballots are the environmental impact of producing paper [5].…”