As you well know, the presidential election of 2020 was quite controversial. Primarily, this is because many Americans believe their vote wasn’t even counted. Now, whether this was due to faulty electronic voting machines, biased poll workers and election officials, or illegal voting practices depend on where you are from.
But it seems no matter the place, the goal in past months and the upcoming ones is to make future elections more secure and, therefore, less vulnerable to fraud. It is why states like Georgia have since seen new voting integrity laws put in place.
It is also why state leadership hopefuls are seeking to ban the use of machines to count ballots and votes in Arizona.
Enter Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
As you well know, Arizona became the home of the first-ever election audit in the nation following the 2020 election. Now, while the complete ramifications of such an extensive process are still being realized, one thing has been made perfectly clear: there were some major problems with the electronic voting machines being used in the state and the machines that were supposed to count all those votes.
According to Lake, as well as Secretary of State hopeful Mark Finchem, also a Republican, the machines are far too easy to hack, making them both unreliable and a major security risk.
And so, the pair are teaming up to make sure that in future elections, hopefully beginning with the November midterms coming later this year, all votes will be hand-counted to ensure that each and every vote is counted and matters.
As Finchem explains, part of the problem with these machines is that they are either owned or have software that is operable in other countries. This fact alone should be of grave concern to the American public, as our elections should in no way, shape, or form ever be put into the hands of noncitizens.
Sure, you might think that someone from outside the U.S. might be more “objective” and unbiased towards an American election. And they could be. But they could also be quite biased indeed, whether they simply disagree with certain political policies or seek to make our leaders ones that can be manipulated easily by others. (Sound familiar?)
Andrew Parker, an attorney working with the courts in the suit, agrees. To him, handling all things election-related should be the sole responsibility of the government. But with outside voting machines and tabulators doing all the work, the government has not only become lazy but also given access to one of its key functions to private companies and/or complete outsiders.
Additionally, the technologies used to operate these voting systems haven’t exactly been made known to the public, creating even less transparency and what Parker calls a “black box” voting system. Naturally, this builds even less integrity as well as credibility.
Another problem with the machines is that, as Parker explains, the testing processes used on them don’t actually do much beyond deciphering if they are in working order. They don’t check for security issues. They don’t ensure any sort of accuracy. And neither do they fix any problems that come up.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, simple manipulation or hacking techniques have been found more than adequate to either change votes or eliminate them completely. These tactics have also been used to manipulate even audit results, making it seem as though everything is in working order when, in fact, it is not.
Those filing the suit, including Parker, want to clarify one thing. The goal of it is not to undo the results of the 2020 election in the state, as many might suggest. If you hadn’t figured out quite yet, that ship has sailed.
Instead, it is “only about the future” and eliminating any potential threats to our voting system and, therefore, who we choose as our leaders.
And if that means going back to hand-counting votes for the foreseeable future, so be it.
Additionally, the suit would like to make a few other key changes. These include things like demanding that ballots are printed on more counterfeit-proof paper, as well as adding a unique ballot number to each that links them to a specific voter and would help to ensure that votes are indeed counted.
Hopefully, the suit will successfully restore integrity to our voting processes. Of course, it will also help if we get leaders like Lake and Finchem into office, where they can make even more productive changes.
