TEXAS VOTING MACHINE CYBER-SECURITY? Several advocacy groups are calling on more than two dozen Texas counties to adopt paper-based voting machines ahead of the 2020 elections. Jamila Benkato is with Protect Democracy, one of the organizations that sent letters to local officials. She explains the counties they contacted use two types of paperless voting machines that are known to have physical and cyber insecurities.
"The counties that we sent the letter to, are counties that currently use paperless systems, which are entirely digital systems" Benkato said. "So there is no backup or paper record of a vote and that means that those systems can not be audited."
Benkato says the counties they reached out to are not the only ones that use paperless machines in Texas, but many are among the most populous in the state.
"In Texas, many of these particular machines are actually very old," explained Benkato. "So they were purchased back in 2005, and sometimes even before so they’re like using a laptop from 2005."
Among those 29 counties contacted included East Texas Counties Cass, Fannin, and Upshur.
