A few months before the U.S. midterm elections in November 2022, social media users have recirculated a 2018 video where a hacker gains administrative access to a voting machine in under two minutes. Circulation of this video in August 2022 is missing context. Since it was originally posted in 2018, the use of the voting machine seen in the clip has been significantly reduced. As of 2022, certain jurisdictions in only three U.S. states are using these machines. In 2016, jurisdictions in 18 U.S. states were using these voting machines.
The more than 1:30-minute-long clip was originally posted on August 11, 2018 by Rachel Tobac – CEO of a U.S.-based security service SocialProof Security and who appears in the footage – (here) which was taken during the annual DEF CON hackers convention in Las Vegas (here).
“I’m really concerned for upcoming elections because this voting machine is used in 18 different states and it’s extremely easy to gain admin access on this machine,” she is heard saying at the beginning of the video. Tobac goes on to demonstrate what a “bad actor” would have to do to access and edit in the machine, highlighting they would “not need any tools.”
The event was covered by the media at the time (here), (here).
The clip prompted questions about election integrity from social media users in August 2022. On Aug. 21, 2022, one user sharing the video wrote: “How to hack into a U.S. voting machine in 2 minutes. Democracy is strong [laughing emoji]” (here).
More iterations can be found on Twitter (here) (here) and Facebook (here) (here) (here).
It was also recently shared on TikTok, Rumble (here), Gab (here) and Tumblr (here).
Reuters contacted Tobac for comment but she didn’t respond as of the time of publishing.
MACHINES IN THE VIDEO
Contacted by Reuters, spokespeople for Verified Voting, a U.S. non-profit that promotes the use of secure technology in election administration, identified the machine in the clip to be an AccuVote TSX – a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) system, designed to record and store votes in a computer’s memory (here) (here).
In 2016, Reuters reported on security concerns about paperless voting machines being vulnerable to tampering or malfunction, including the AccuVote TSX, Virginia Beach, Virginia, for example, pulled 32 of its 820 Accuvote TSX touch-screen machines in a 2014 election after residents complained that the machines were registering votes for candidates they didn’t support. (here)
Tobac was likely citing the number of states (16) that were using AccuVote TSX machines in 2016, based on a public registry of election day equipment kept by Verified Voting (here). By 2018, they were used in jurisdictions across 17 states (here).
WHAT ABOUT 2022?
The AccuVote TSX machines were “once the most widely fielded” system in the country, Verified Voting told Reuters. “In 2006 it was used in 24 states in jurisdictions representing just under ¼ of registered voters nationwide. For 2022 it’s just over 0.5%.”
As of 2022, only three states use the AccuVote TSX machines to some degree, based on Verified Voting’s registry (here Missouri (here), Illinois (here), and Mississippi (here).
Matt Dietrich, public information officer for the Illinois State Board of Elections provided Reuters with a log of Illinois’ voting equipment systems. The log showed that 17 jurisdictions use the AccuVote TSX.
A spokesperson for Mississippi’s Secretary of State’s office told Reuters the AccuVote TSX is currently used in 30 counties. “However, by the November election, it is expected that this number will drop to approximately 16 counties as several counties are currently in the process of moving to paper ballot-based voting machines,” they said.
Reuters was not able to confirm whether the AccuVote TSX is still used in Bates County and the City of St. Louis, the two Missouri jurisdictions listed by Verified Voting. Election officials for the two jurisdictions did not immediately reply to Reuters’ request for comment.
JoDonn Chaney, Director of Communications for the Secretary of State in Missouri said a law that recently went into effect “will prohibit the use of direct recording equipment” in Missouri by January 1, 2024 (here).
A PAPER TRAIL
Illinois and Missouri already mostly use hand-marked paper ballots and the jurisdictions that use the AccuVote TSX are required to produce a paper record to be verified by the voter, according to Verified Voting (here) (here).
“In the case of the AccuVote TSX, the paper record is verified by the voter before the ballot is tabulated. Then, the paper record is used in any subsequent retabulation,” Dietrich, from the Illinois State Board of Elections, said. Illinois conducts a random retabulation after any election of 5% of precincts (here).
In Missouri, the results are also audited before being certified, according to the Office of the Secretary of State’s website detailing election security mechanisms (here).
In all but one of the jurisdictions in Mississippi, the AccuVote TSX machines do not provide a so-called Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), according to Verified Voting (here).
Mississippi did sign a law this year requiring the use of voting machines that produce a voter-verifiable paper ballot starting 2024 (here). “No DREs [Direct Recording Equipment]will be in use after Dec. 2023, in compliance with the Mississippi Voting Modernization Act,” the spokesperson for Mississippi’s Secretary of State’s office told Reuters.
As of 2022, nearly 70% of registered U.S. voters live in jurisdictions that primarily use hand-marked paper ballots while about 7% are in jurisdictions that primarily use DRE machines, based on data from Verified Voting. A Reuters report on the voting technology used across the United States ahead of the November midterms can be found (here).
VERDICT
Missing context. This clip from 2018 shows an AccuVote TSX, a voting machine that has been significantly phased out by most U.S. states. As of 2022, only some jurisdictions in three U.S. states still use these machines.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work (here).