Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Made with Flourish

How Louisiana ended up as this year’s election security outlier

Made with Flourish
Made with Flourish

The moment of truth for voting system reliability remains nearly nine months off, but already Louisiana has earned itself a troublesome and unique footnote in the story of the 2020 presidential election.

It will surely be the only state running totally afoul of the new world of balloting best practices, which says creating and keeping a paper record is the only way to assure every vote is counted accurately (and recounted if need be) and properly reflects the will of the voter.

There won't be a single sheet of paper involved in tabulating the results in Louisiana on Election Day — unlike any of the other 49 states, according to a comprehensive study by Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that promotes the integrity of elections. All 3,934 polling places will use entirely electronic voting machines that are at least 15 years old, and which do not generate printouts of anything as a fail-safe if something goes wrong.


Louisiana's new distinction as a voting security outsider adds to its longstanding reputation for unique electoral behavior — which extends from its renown for colorful if ethically challenged candidates to its use of a peculiar election timetable that often results in December runoffs for the top posts.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The state's standout position is all the more notable now, after a string of cyberattacks in the past couple of years against the government in Baton Rouge and local governments crippled the work of several agencies that deal with the public, costing millions of dollars and making the public keenly aware of cyber vulnerabilities.

And obstinance is not the reason the state is sticking with its voting booths Nov. 3, even as the overwhelming majority of the country will have reverted by then to the sort of hand-marked paper ballots that were ubiquitous through the 1990s.

Instead, a multimillion-dollar contract to replace the state's entire inventory of 10,000 machines — with equipment generating a paper trail of each vote — was scrapped in 2018 because, Louisiana's chief procurement officer ruled, the secretary of state's office failed to follow the rules for picking a winning vendor.

A new contract has not been awarded, and bidders are permitted to phase in the equipment over three years. This will leave the state in the unenviable position of sacrificing more and more of the machines it bought in 2005 or earlier, so it can harvest them for spare parts to keep a critical mass of the old equipment in good working order on Election Day.

This suggests the loss of thousands of votes due to the failures of the aging machinery — which uses pushbuttons for making choices next to a display screen of candidate names — probably poses a more immediate threat to a successful Louisiana election than hacking.

Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, the state's chief elections official, has insisted there is no risk of foreign intrusion because the machines are never connected to the internet — and are programmed by state employees at the capital before each election using computers that are not supposed to have been connected to the internet, either.

It's impossible to eliminate the threat of malware entirely, though, because some of the programming laptops may have gone online at some point and because the state's election machine warehouses are not impervious to breaking and entering.

"It's never slipped through the cracks because you have to test every machine with the local election board," Ardoin told the Baton Rouge Advocate. "They would figure out if there's a problem with a machine right away. And second of all we've never had that kind of a problem. It doesn't exist."

In fact, a hack could remain imperceptible in altering this year's results. Donald Trump carried Louisiana's 8 electoral votes by 20 points (almost 400,000 votes) last time, making him the fifth straight Republican winner. And none of the congressional races this year looms as remotely competitive, with five GOP incumbents and one Democratic incumbent looking to cruise to new terms.

Absentee votes are still cast on paper sheets, and early voting is done in the 64 parishes (or counties) on rented machinery that generates a paper trail. Louisiana is one of relatively few states that provide all election hardware to the localities that administer the voting.

In the world of voting, Louisiana's machines are known as DREs, for direct recording electronic voting. They were the wave of the future after 2000, when confusing paper ballot designs and imprecise punch cards fueled the dispute over the razor-thin margin of George W. Bush's decisive win in Florida.

Since 2016, with the help of hundreds of millions in federal grants, DREs have largely disappeared. New Jersey, Tennessee, Alabama and Indiana are the only other places where most, but not all machines in use this fall will be electronic without any paper backup.

"Aging voting equipment, particularly voting machines that had no paper record of votes, were vulnerable to exploitation by a committed adversary," the Senate Intelligence Committee said in the first of its series of bipartisan reports on the Russian interference campaign in the last presidential contest. "Despite the focus on this issue since 2016, some of these vulnerabilities remain."

Made with Flourish

Read More

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
hundred dollar bills.
Getty Images, boonchai wedmakawand

Congress Bill Spotlight: Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act

The Fulcrum introduces Congress Bill Spotlight, a weekly report by Jesse Rifkin, focusing on the noteworthy legislation of the thousands introduced in Congress. Rifkin has written about Congress for years, and now he's dissecting the most interesting bills you need to know about but that often don't get the right news coverage.

Trump reportedly tips his Mar-a-Lago groundskeepers with $100 bills. What if his own face appeared on them?

Keep ReadingShow less
Introducing The Expand Democracy 5

Introducing The Expand Democracy 5

In March, Rob Richie and Eveline Dowling launched a new Expand Democracy publication: The Expand Democracy 5. Each week they lift up five stories connected to their core belief: if democracy is not expanding, it is shrinking. They’re on the lookout for informative articles and timely news associated with a pro-democracy proposal that they believe warrants greater public awareness, often with links allowing readers to go deeper and connect with those advancing the idea.

In keeping with The Fulcrum’s mission to share ideas that help to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives, we intend to publish The Expand Democracy 5 in The Fulcrum each Friday, beginning today.

Keep ReadingShow less
Defining the Democracy Movement: Karissa Raskin
- YouTube

Defining the Democracy Movement: Karissa Raskin

The Fulcrum presents The Path Forward: Defining the Democracy Reform Movement. Scott Warren's interview series engages diverse thought leaders to elevate the conversation about building a thriving and healthy democratic republic that fulfills its potential as a national social and political game-changer. This initiative is the start of focused collaborations and dialogue led by The Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum teams to help the movement find a path forward.

Karissa Raskin is the new CEO of the Listen First Project, a coalition of over 500 nationwide organizations dedicated to bridging differences. The coalition aims to increase social cohesion across American society and serves as a way for bridging organizations to compare notes, share resources, and collaborate broadly. Karissa, who is based in Jacksonville, served as the Director of Coalition Engagement for a number of years before assuming the CEO role this February.

Keep ReadingShow less