The Starke County Election Board is taking steps to keep voters’ ballots secure. New regulations now require that voting machines be locked up when they aren’t in use, to prevent tampering.
Starke County’s maintenance staff has recommended securing the machines by placing a wooden beam in front of their current storage space. They say that will prevent anyone from pulling them out without having a key. Last week, the election board authorized maintenance staff to draw up a plan, so the Clerk’s Office can make sure the arrangement would comply with the new rules.
The voting machines do not connect to the Internet, so the biggest concern has to do with their physical security. On top of that, the machines’ design makes them difficult to hack into, according to MicroVote representative Steve Shamo. “The reality of it is, there’s no USB port on it,” he told the election board.
“No USB, no wireless,” added Starke County IT Director Mark Gourley. “You’d have to have one of the specialized cards to get into it, and that’s even if you had managed to figure out the bit format on that card to make modifications, assuming you got past the election judge at the polling place.”
The election board has also agreed to pursue upgrades to the voting machines themselves, to bring them up to the latest federal standards.
