(Reuters) - Misinformation online and false claims of election fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies have sharply eroded public trust in the integrity of U.S. elections. How Americans vote — and the equipment they use — varies widely, and some methods are more vulnerable to efforts to shake that trust.
Heading into the 2022 midterms, election experts say the move in most states to hybrid voting systems – paper ballots tallied by electronic machines – could give voters greater confidence.
The United States invested hugely in paperless electronic voting machines after the contested presidential election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush in 2000 shook election officials’ confidence in paper ballots.
By 2006, the share of registered voters using paperless machines had surged, though hand-marked paper ballots that are later scanned by electronic tabulators remained the most popular. For the next decade, about a third of all votes were cast on direct recording electronic machines.
These electronic voting machines store the votes in their memory. The lack of a physical record to back up the electronic vote means election officials must trust that the machines do not malfunction and change or lose a vote, that poll workers do not inadvertently alter votes, or that the machines are not hacked, said Douglas Jones, a retired University of Iowa computer science professor who spent decades studying the use of computers in elections.
In 2016 about...
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