Experts differ on security of Pennsylvania's voting machines

Pennsylvania is one of 33 states which accepted the Department of Homeland Security’s offer to check its voting machines. But, even local experts don’t agree on whether the machines are totally safe from hackers.

A computer expert said one of the biggest problems is that the machines run on Windows XP software, which hasn’t had a security update patch since 2014.

"Voting machines used in much of Pennsylvania are not up to modern standards of security in terms of high-issuing software development and in terms of being able to resist attacks by motivated well-equipped people,” said Dave Eckhardt, of Carnegie Mellon University.

But some election workers disagree.

"It's a standalone system in each precinct on Election Day. No machines are connected to other precinct machines,” Allegheny County elections division manager Mark Wolosik said.

Wolosik said none of the machines are connected to the internet, which means hackers would have to break into the device itself, likely in the warehouse where it’s stored.

“It would take somebody four months of access to the warehouse, moving machines in and out, opening them up, without ever being detected,” said Michael Shamos, also of Carnegie Mellon.

The potential of voting machine hacking has some people calling for Pennsylvania to revert back to paper ballots. They say a piece of paper does no change when it’s put into a box, and voters have the ability to inspect the ballot as part of the voting process.

But others say paper ballots aren’t foolproof, because voters can’t look at ballots after an election and determine if it’s been counted.

In Allegheny County, some paper ballots will be available, but mostly in case electronic voting machines fail for some reason.

Voting machines in Pennsylvania cannot print paper backups because it’s illegal to leave a paper train in the state when it comes to voting.

Cox Media Group