Software voting flaw in Georgia

Georgia's known voting software flaw still unfixed ahead of November midterms

A software flaw in Georgia's statewide voting equipment, first exposed in 2022, can allow voters to be matched to their ballots, and state officials have refused to apply the manufacturer's recommended fix before this fall's elections.

Security researchers at the University of Michigan and Princeton University are raising fresh alarms about the vulnerability in Georgia's Dominion Voting Systems equipment, now sold under the name Liberty Vote. The flaw allows electronic ballot records that are supposed to be randomized to be restored to their original casting order.

Combined with publicly available data, early voting lists, scanner audit logs, and precinct check-in records obtainable through open records requests, that sequence can be used to match individual voters to the ballots they cast. The Associated Press reported that the State Election Board rejected a proposed rule in August that would have required the secretary of state's office to apply the software update before November.

Georgia is the only state that uses the system statewide without the fix applied. And the state's constitution says elections "shall be by secret ballot." State law requires voting machines to "permit voting in absolute secrecy so that no person can see or know any other elector's votes." Revealing how someone voted is a felony.

Those protections are on paper. The software flaw means, in practice, they can be circumvented by anyone with a laptop, a few public records requests, and, thanks to recent advances, a free AI tool.

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