Certain skeptical attendees such as Tim Cahill, a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, embraced the idea of the VotingWorks machine displayed at an event in Concord. Despite Cahill’s preference for hand counting all state ballots, he approved of the openness and transparency of the VotingWorks system as compared to other vendors. “How can you trust something you can’t see?”, questioned Cahill.
Meanwhile, the Accu-Vote machines were utilized for the handling of absentee ballots in Fairbanks, Alaska. Other states too found followers for the open-source technology. Kevin Cavanaugh, a county supervisor from Pinal, Arizona, started to doubt voting machines after watching a conspiracy-based documentary suggesting that such machines contained unauthorized software that could manipulate vote totals surreptitiously.
In late 2022, Cavanaugh proposed a notion for hand counting a larger number of ballots in his county. He mentioned to Undark that while he prefers full hand count, he advocates for machines having source code that can be reviewed by experts if they are to be used.
Many among the 201 attendees at the Concord gathering gave high scores to VotingWorks, indicating its popularity. But among election officials, Dominion was the front-runner. There were officials doubtful that common voters would understand or value open-source technology. However, five New Hampshire towns have already acquired VotingWorks machines for use in upcoming local elections scheduled for March.
Factors that influence an individual’s trust in an election process, according to Charles Stewart III from MIT, includes personal experiences at polling booths and the success of the candidate they support. Echoing Stewart’s comments, Tammy Patrick, ex-election official in Maricopa County and currently the CEO for National Association of Election Official programs, states that restoring faith after an election is an uphill task due to emotional bias.
It’s not Adida’s aim to singlehandedly eradicate election denialism with VotingWorks. Rather, he aims to gain the trust of the undecided majority, he labels as the “middle 80 percent”. Adida maintains that the transparency of their system is key to dispelling misinformation about the company regarding election rigging, even if the public doesn’t directly access the company’s GitHub account.
Adida pointed out that during the 2020 election, rumors spread about miscounts by machinery. His response to those rumors was to make the source code open and available to the public. Adida’s commitment to transparency and the debunking of false rumors is his counter-approach against widespread election fraud misinformation.
Spenser Mestel, a poll worker and independent journalist. The original article was first published on Undark, and featured his work in prominent publications like The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Intercept.
