Information Security is an illusion. Even if the people making these voting machines were honest, they aren’t, the machines are in the hands of too many partisan people to ever possibly be considered secure.
As I understand it, these machines have USB ports. That alone tells me they are not serious about security. A USB port in a public place is the cyber equivalent of dropping your soap in a prison shower. Somebody gonna stick something in it.
I worked corporate IT. One of our security consultants told a story of how he used to steal a system admin credential on his way in to visit a new client. He used a USB drive. He just needed 2 minutes of standing near a machine on the network that was logged in. He’d sneak it in a USB port while idly chatting with a receptionist waiting to go in. Physical setups didn’t always permit access to a port, but his exploit tool he used to get passwords worked. He often could present a companies admin credentials in the first minutes of a meeting. He often won their business too.
My story from years ago (trying to revive my I/T career, I thought this might let me do it - wrong!)
I took an I/T Manager job. In reality, they only wanted me to fix the horrible mess they made of an AS/400 with native S/36 code.
First day on the job, user gets ransomware virus. We confiscated the machine next day on Monday. Nothing could save it.
7 weeks later, another user got a worse ransomware virus. NO real-time virus protection. No security Admin protection. No LAN. No SAN, No tape daily backups (Like the AS/400). Nothing.
I shut the machine down and prepared to confiscate it that afternoon. Told them it was unrecoverable. Left a note on the monitor; DO NOT TOUCH.
About 30 minutes later, find my idiot boss and his idiot boss along with the department manager of sales WITH THE MACHINE RESTARTED TRYING TO CONNECT TO THE SALES LEAD PC.
Shocked, I asked them what (in the world) were they were doing?
About 30 minutes later, my boss’ idiot boss, the plant manager was cursing at me.
They were too stupid to learn a thing. I resigned. It was nothing but a mess. Worst mistake of my career walking into that horrible mess (Kansas).
sigh