As the elected official charged with running safe and fair elections in suburban Cook County, I am pleased to see the Tribune highlighting the New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice’s report on potential electioneering (“Hacking the vote,” Editorial, July 11).
Fortunately Cook County’s new electronic equipment is not vulnerable to the remote sabotage that the Brennan Center theorizes in its study. The problems we faced in slow results reporting during the primary were unrelated to security issues.
In fact, unlike many states, we have the voter verifiable paper trail that the Brennan Center recommends.
Illinois’ requirements for a paper trail–spearheaded by my office’s efforts in Springfield–set a standard for the rest of the country. Our post-primary audit of votes was accurate and more extensive than the Brennan guidelines.
A random selection of 5 percent, or 119, precincts was given intense scrutiny, comparing the electronic vote to the paper record line by line, to make sure there was no security breach. The system passed with flying colors.
Plus the unit that stores our vote totals cannot be accessed by any remote hacking or handheld device, because it won’t accept outside data, unlike the voting machines criticized by Brennan.
As we have seen from election news around the country, there are always glitches in adopting new election equipment. This was as true in the spring of 2006 as it was decades ago, when lever machines gave way to punch cards.
But plans to improve election administration are under way. In November we will have additional touch screens to serve the voters, and more staff with expertise in optical-scan and touch-screen equipment.
While there may be a few more bumps in the road ahead, we are confident that voters will enjoy a secure election this fall.