Building a Voting Machine Everyone Can Trust
summary
VotingWorks builds an open-source voting machine and argues trust depends on resilience to human error more than just security. Examples: folded mail ballots in Windham cause systematic overvotes, markers smear glass and create 3–4% false reads, and Antrim County shows an off-by-one config bug that flips aggregated totals. Practical fixes deployed: QR-coded ballot-hash to reject mismatched configs, image processing that detects streaks and forces cleaning, and dual-angle illumination to ignore folds; the fixes are applied statewide and backed by open-source transparency.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Trustworthy voting machines
- 2:41Paper ballots and audits limits
- 3:46Human error biggest threat
- 4:06Windham New Hampshire fold issue
- 6:34Voting Works marker ink smear
- 8:17Antrim County configuration error
- 14:14Resilience engineering
- 16:18Preventing mismatches
- 17:20Scanner failures handling
- 18:27Transparency and open source
- 20:53Open source builds trust
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