Hacker who studied elections loves our paper ballots

Reported by Geoff Forester in today’s Monitor; I helped with the writing:

A nationally known computer hacker, a term he wears proudly, helped keep an eye on New Hampshire’s primary Tuesday but says you didn’t need computer smarts to see that it went well.

“One big thing is no lines. When you go around the United States, usually the first thing you see if there are problems are long lines of people who can’t get to vote,” said Harri Hursti, a cybersecurity analyst who founded DefCon Voting Village, a election-security event at DefCon, the nation’s best-known gathering of people interested in computer security. (NOTE: I originally wrote that he founded DefCon itself, which is wrong.)

Hursti has worked with the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office since about 2005, when he met Secretary of State Bill Gardner at a conference. His presence here for Tuesday’s primary was of particular importance because of the meltdown of the Iowa caucuses caused largely by the use of an untested app. During a discussion Wednesday morning as election officials completed counting votes from around the state he was almost effusive about how things went.

“I talked to people … There was only one person in the whole of yesterday who said, ‘I’m not happy.’ That is amazing! There’s always that one, but normally it’s, like, hundreds who are not happy … with an election,” said Hursti, who is Finnish. “I really like how people are happy and how smoothly everything went.”

Hursti was quick to echo a comment that New Hampshire election officials have been making for many years: In voting, low-tech is often good tech.

“Paper ballots, they are important! That gives a lot of confidence, people understand what they’re doing,” he said. “It is a permanent mark of the vote, and it’s understandable to transfer.”

Tuesday’s smooth voting was particularly important because turnout was very strong.

Democrats cast 300,622 ballots, which was more than the 292,000 that had been predicted and a full 46,000 more than were cast in 2016. Republicans cast 156,418 ballots, a sharp dropoff from the contested GOP ballot of four years ago, but still higher than the state had expected.

Secretary of State Gardner said in the morning that it appears the Democratic primary turnout “will be the highest ever by number for either party” and President Trump probably “got more votes in this primary than any person ever got in a presidential primary.”

“On both sides, there’s going to be something to look at … It’s all good, it’s all participation,” said Gardner.

Gardner attributed the relative lack of lines both to preparation and sufficient staffing, including the thousands of volunteers who counted ballots and checked in voters and otherwise helped – plus the fact that people in New Hampshire were voting all day long.

“They all came out at different times. It was a steady vote all day long, not a surge at 8 in the morning, then 9 to 12 nobody came, and so on,” Gardner said.

Hursti said the operational lesson from the first caucus and the first primary are clear.

“In Iowa, what they did wrong … was they were changing everything at once, and taking technology that was not tested,” he said. “New Hampshire is about proven technology, proven ways of doing things. … that takes the training pressure away from the poll-workers, something you are used to doing, your parents were doing before you – everybody knows how the process goes.”

State officials were complimentary, too. But as technology advances, new threats will emerge.

“Let’s understand that hacking will not go away, it is here for every critical infrastructure … so let’s make everything as resilient and strong against it as we can. Again – paper ballots are wonderful,” Hursti said. “That’s where everybody in America needs to get back to.”