New report from Steven Rosenfeld (National Political Report, Voting Booth) and Duncan Buell (Chair Emeritus, USC Dept. of Computer Science). Short description of the report from its authors:
This report describes how the systems that create ballots and detect and count votes work. The national media often trivializes this aspect of elections. They talk about clerical tasks, not properly programming and syncing 100s of devices. In 2020, errors by officials in a few rural counties with setting up and using these computers led to wrong election night results. Trump votes were bumped down in spreadsheets and assigned to Biden. Or officials double-counted votes but blamed the computers. Though found and fixed, the errors helped MAGA provocateurs and legislators to launch bogus post-election inquiries. These charades, featuring self-appointed experts spouting irrelevant and made-up technical-sounding claims, became fixtures on right-wing media.