In an announcement that should be a surprise to nobody, U.S. intelligence services have concluded that Russia is continuing its interference in American elections to benefit its puppet-in-chief currently occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.   And, of course, the Republican response to this news has been to downplay its significance.

Securing our elections from foreign interference is important, but not easy.  There are three significant aspects to election security:  vote counting, registration records, and disinformation.

The easiest of the three to secure is vote counting.  And there are several steps to it.  Some states and jurisdictions follow some of these practices, but all need to follow all of them.

First, and foremost, the centerpiece to protect the accuracy of the vote count is the paper ballot.  To date, nobody has developed a better means of recording (and accurately preserving the record) of a person’s intended vote than the paper ballot.  A paper ballot can’t be hacked by a remote computer or altered by a bug put into a program.  Fixing a paper ballot requires somebody to have actual physical access to the ballot.  And an unaltered paper ballot can be reviewed after the election to verify the actual vote.

Second, all vote counting machines should be air-gapped from the time that the counting software for that election has been installed until after the election.  While this will not stop a bug from being installed at the time when it is programmed, it will prevent hacking during the count.  The final count can be downloaded to a USB drive which can then be downloaded to another device for transmission to the state election authorities.

Third, all counting devices should be tested (using a test deck with a known count and specific “test” issues such as over-vote and under-vote and various ways to split ticket vote) shortly before the election and as part of the certification process.

Fourth, all precincts and counting centers should have bipartisan teams to assure the integrity of the process.  When the precinct closes, the ballot box should be sealed with the seals signed by judges from both parties.

Fifth, the certification process should require an “audit” of randomly selected precincts and races to assure that the ballot count from the precinct matches the number of people who voted in the precinct.  That audit should include a hand recount to assure that the hand count matches the totals reported by the counting machines.  If the hand recount shows a significant issue, the hand count should be expanded to other races and issues.  The final certified count for the jurisdiction should reflect any changes to the vote in individual precincts from the audit.  (Similarly, the state canvass should double check the math from the certified returns to make sure that the state returns are accurate.)

The security of the voter registration process is much harder to fix.  The paradox is that every tool that we use that makes it easy for somebody to register (i.e. allowing folks to register at any place where they interact with other government agency or allowing folks to register over the internet) creates another point of access to the voter registration records.  And that ignores the local election office opening up an e-mail that contains malware.  Obviously, these offices need to practice good computer security, but there is no fool proof system.  One suggestion for an added layer of security would be periodically printing out the voting rolls and comparing the rolls for any apparent deletions not done by an authorized agency.  (in a perfect world, the printout would also include a list of authorized deletions over the 30-60 days between printouts.)

The hardest part is dealing with disinformation.  The rules of political discourse are simply not able to distinguish between inaccurate information that originates in this country and inaccurate information that originates with a hostile foreign government.   And modern social media makes it easy to spread disinformation out to those who are most likely to believe it.  Unfortunately, once somebody hears inaccurate information that confirms a bias, it is hard to persuade them that the information was not true.  All that we can do is to put forth the facts when faced with a ludicrous claim.  While it may not persuade everyone, it may convince some people to do a little research on their own to verify what is really happening.

We know that Russia has significant strategic interests that conflict with our interests.  Russia, of course, is not alone.  We need to do our best to resist these outside efforts to manipulate our elections before it becomes accepted practice among our adversaries.