BILL NUMBER: S6733

SPONSOR: MYRIE
 
TITLE OF BILL:  An act to amend the election law, in relation to
construction of voting machines' ballot boxes

 
PURPOSE:

This bill would improve the security of our elections by requiring that
any hybrid voting machines certified by the State Board of Election
should be constructed so that it is physically impossible for additional
marks to be mechanically added to the ballot once it has been cast by a
voter.

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section one amends paragraph u of subdivision 1 of section 7-202 of the
election law to require that any voting machine certified by the State
Board of Elections should be constructed so that the paper path into the
ballot box is physically separate from the printer path.

              

Section two provides the effective date.

 
JUSTIFICATION:

The threat of the hacking of the machines that we rely on for free,
fair, and democratic elections is very real and requires us to take
every reasonable precaution to protect the bedrock of our republic and
all our other rights as Americans - our right to vote. A United States
Senate Intelligence Committee report released in July 2019 detailed how
hackers had likely targeted election systems and machines in all 50
states both in 2016 and in the midterm elections of 2018. Even more
alarming, some of those attempts at unauthorized access in Illinois and
Florida were successful.

To provide our voters with confidence that their cast ballot will
unquestionably and accountably reflect their preference and only their
preference, New York has instituted many common sense reforms, like
insisting on individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballots as a
backup to electronic voting through a machine. However, there are many
different types of machines that provide secure electronic voting with a
paper backup, and questions have been raised specifically about the
security and potential physical flaws of so-called "hybrid" voting
machines, which combine a scanner and a ballot-marking device.

The intent of using a hybrid machine is to provide additional opportu-
nities for the voter to verify his or her vote. A voter makes their
selection on a screen, and then can either cast the vote 4s1S or print
out a copy of their ballot to visually inspect it before running it
through a scanner. For one such hybrid, the Dominion Imagecast Evolution
("Dominion ICE"), a potential flaw in its physical design has raised the
specter that a hacked machine could be programmed to add marks to a cast
ballot after it has been inspected by the voter, thereby changing the
ballot contrary to the will of the voter. Andrew W. Appel, the Eugene
Higgins Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer
Science at Princeton University, published an online description of the
flaw, specifically that in being scanned, the paper ballot passes a
second time under the print heads. His concern was shared by Richard A.
DeMillo, Charlotte B.  and Roger C. Warren Distinguished Professor of
Computing in the Department of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute
of Technology, who wrote "absent a thorough and convincing design and
code review--there is no way to be confident that the system is immune
from the ballot stuffing attack he describes." Based on these published
concerns, Douglas A. Kellner Co-Chair NYS Board of Elections requested
that the Election Operations Unit of the State Board examine again the
ImageCast Evolution to consider the vulnerability of the voting system
because the printer could be programmed to add marks to ballots without
verification by the voter. Dominion sent a letter touting the benefits
of its hybrid machines, but did not specifically explain what they had
already or would in the future do to make it physically impossible for
an election fraud scenario as described by the professors to occur.

In New York State, 14 counties have purchased these specific hybrid
machine models. There are approximately 1.3 million eligible voters who
potentially could use these hybrid machines.

This bill would add the requirement to Election Law that any voting
machine certified by State Board of Elections that utilizes a hybrid
function should be constructed so that the paper path into the ballot
box is physically separate from the printer path, so that it would be
physically impossible for a ballot to go underneath a printer head after
it has been cast by a voter.

Since the risk that an electronic voting machine could be hacked through
malware or some other means can never be eliminated entirely, the least
we can do is guarantee the physical security of paper ballots by ensur-
ing it cannot physically be altered once cast by the voter.

 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

New bill.

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Immediately.