Given the concern with electronic hacking this past election, old-fashioned paper ballots might seem more reliable. But after listening to computer science Professor J. Alex Halderman and doctoral student Matt Bernhard discuss the recent US election at the Chaos Communications Congress, even paper ballots might not provide much reassurance about election outcomes. Although their analysis of recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin found no clear evidence of hacking, it did reveal troubling vulnerabilities in the US election system. Not only would it be entirely possible to alter the results reported by a number of electronic voting machines while leaving no obvious trace of an attack, it would be possible to do that at the scale needed to hack an election. “I’m pretty sure my undergraduate security class could have changed the outcome of the presidential election,” Halderman said. “It really is that bad.”
