Karen Sebold, University of Arkansas Professor of Political Science
I recently attended a symposium on “Building Better Elections: New Challenges in Electoral Management,” held at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass. It was a privilege to represent the University of Arkansas at the conference which was attended by a group of scholars, state election officials and a representative from the Department of Homeland Security. This was a captivating meeting especially given the modern day issues that plague our election system from natural interferences, such as hurricanes that shut down Election Day voting, to intelligent interferences, such as a cyber or physical attack.
Governments attempt to mitigate and plan for these events to cope with these uncertainties. However, as with the other areas of public policy, mitigation and planning for natural or intelligent interferences also vary by state. States like Colorado, Minnesota and Ohio provide resources for election cybersecurity guidance and planning and rank among the most ready of the states to cope with election vulnerabilities, while a few states like Arkansas provide few to no resources for this policy area and rank among the most vulnerable of states. The Center for American Progress recently ranked Arkansas as one of 17 states that it awarded a grade of either a D or F to for being at risk for election infrastructure vulnerabilities in its study of election security in the United States.
Arkansas scored an F primarily because of its use of voting machines that do not provide a paper record, and the state also fails to mandate post-election audits to offer confirmation that ballots are cast as the voter intends and counted as cast. Furthermore, Arkansas has a decade-old voter registration database that is susceptible to outside interference via hacking. The report acknowledges that the state is to be commended for ensuring all of their voting machines are tested to EAC Voluntary Voting System Guidelines and examined for accuracy before Election Day voting. However, until the state stops using paperless machines in some of its jurisdictions and starts to conduct robust post-election audits that test the accuracy of the electoral outcomes, the state will continue to rank among the most exposed to natural and intelligent interferences.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson recently discussed this topic on a local nightly news broadcast. He believes that “there’s nothing more important than the integrity of our election system,” and that the “we’re doing everything we can to make sure the election has integrity” and he had no reason to believe it will be compromised this fall. However, the local station he appeared on also reports that the state has chosen to not take advantage of any of the resources offered by the federal government to state election officials to advance their policies on mitigation and planning for Election Day interferences. The most valuable asset they offer is a two-week cyber risk vulnerability assessment of the state’s election system. The state official contacted by the local reporter mentioned that he hopes the state will eventually take advantage of these resources but is otherwise “confident this year’s midterm elections are secure.”
Given the state’s low national ranking and the academic evidence that corroborates it, I am not as confident about the security of Arkansas’s election system in neither this year’s elections nor in future ones. The state needs to consider the policy recommendations made by The Center for American Progress and take advantage of the national resources available to address this public policy problem and to promote and maintain the state’s electoral integrity. States that ignore the realities of this issue will find that their citizen’s confidence erodes in the integrity of their elections and the legitimacy of their elected officials.
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