US voting machines are failing. Here’s why.
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- Опубликовано: 28 мар 2018
- The greatest threat to American voting machines might not be hacking, but old age.
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In our latest collaboration with ProPublica, we take a look at US election security and the status of American voting machines. Check out the full ProPublica report at: bit.ly/2Hw3Dcb.
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In 2017, hackers Rick Rolled a voting machine in Las Vegas. Even though the machine was out-of-date and the demonstration didn’t replicate real-life conditions, the stunt brought national attention to an election crisis that has been building ever since the “hanging chad” fiasco that occurred during the 2000 Presidential election recount.
In her story on American election security, ProPublica’s Kate Rabinowitz revealed that many state and local election officials are suffering a funding crisis. Without the money needed to maintain and update electronic voting machines, officials are having to make do with equipment that was manufactured in 2008 or even earlier. At that time, most machines had recently been replaced thanks to the 2002 Help America Vote Act, but few have been updated since.
By isolating machines from the internet and keeping them in secure locations, officials are able to reduce the threat of widespread hacking, but the machines are plagued with more mundane technical problems that states have been slow to address and could have major consequences for future elections.
On the bright side, the omnibus spending bill that was passed in March 2018 allocated $380 million dollars for state election officials to update their voting infrastructure. Whether that money is actually provided and how it will be spent, however, remains to be seen.
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Imagine being rick rolled while trying to vote in a national election
Terra Titanius I would actually be amused.
bruh moment
I would fly to USA just to get rickrolled by that machine
@Ethan Chu bruh
@Ethan Chu I mean true
Did I just get rickrolled by Vox?
Also, this is why the uk does paper ballots with entirely manual counting where representatives of all of the political parties and the media are present to watch the count.
Sure, it takes an awful long time, with some counts not being declared until 7am or later when polls close at 10pm, but it's the most secure and reliable method of voting. No ageing machines necessary
Same in Germany. The results come in reasonably fast, although I guess because we have proportional representation, things converge much faster than in the US or the UK where a few votes can completely turn an election on its head. Which IMHO is a different problem entirely BTW.
Vectored Thrust And you can get hired to do the counting for 80 quid an hour!
We use the same method in Spain, polls close at 8PM (9PM in the Canary Islands) and normally we have the whole thing warped up by 10:30-11PM, even in the Canaries.
The US takes long and doesn't even have a good vote system
we do thar in canada too. the usa is lazy
Same deal in Canada. Even in a decent-sized riding (what the Americans call a voting district), the ballots are counted quickly and efficiently, but everything is done manually. This way, there's no risk of the vote count being incorrect, or subject to potential outside interference.
In the UK last time I checked it's just "cross in the box" with a pencil, can't go wrong there.
Uk votes counted?
But having ballot trucks nationwide would mean that if one gets hijacked, some votes may never be counted. Plus, it would mean traffic jams and increased carbon emissions.
aycc-nbh72 like you Americans care about climate change you voted for trump🤢
BestBmw 122 But not all Americans did. Many localities are taking their own initiatives to help ease climate change. Heck, Trump is even taking some steps, such as putting the US into the one trillion tree initiative.
@@aycc-nbh7289 "Trillion tree initiative". Oh really, like that's gonna put a dent to your enormous carbon emissions. Also trillion trees ain't much, us indians planted 220 million in a freaking day
The link doesn’t rickroll you...
*the voting machine does*
Never gonna
Give the coffee up, never gonna let the coffee down.
Buying new machines every ten years... How about simple paper voting?
Charles Kuhn counting is much easier digitally.
I don't see how it is much easier. With paper voting you physically have every single vote represented as a sheet of paper and then you just count that. Much more trustworthy than a number on some hard disk imo, and counting may take a few hours in larger election areas but what does that matter if it's at least very easy and simple to validate the integrity and do recounts, etc.?
My home state (Maryland) now uses a paper ballot that is basically Scan-Tron, and fed into a machine that counts the vote. If there is a problem, there is a paper ballot that takes precedent over the machine tally. But not every state will want to do that. These machines replaced the infamous Diebold touchscreen/chip card ballots that had no paper trail to them (not even a receipt).
Detryk Willis not necessarily, and even if it was easier, it's not as safe
Volteer not with this specific device but those "numbers on a hard disk" are typically much more trustworthy and makes many less errors the humans would.
Edit. I'm referring to technology in general not voting machines specifically
There is this really handy thing called paper. It's pretty hacker proof and you can use it together with the help of a pen. Works pretty good here in Germany.
You wouldn't have people vote with a pencil. It's still hackable in the sense that someone can make it invalid by ticking multiple boxes. That's where security comes in though, making sure no ordinary person can get to the ballots and having multiple people be involved in the process of transporting and counting the votes. Paper is pretty bad for the environment considering the number of people in the US. Australia still uses paper. I don't think we've had any issue about hacking or whatever. At most there's always someone who doesn't fill in their ballot correctly but that's about it as far as I know.
Wolfferoni Ticking multiple boxes or something similar in order to make your vote invalid is actually a kind of protest. You are basically saying that you support the democratic system, but aren't happy with the choices you were given. The votes will still be counted so that the relative amount of votes will always be accurate.
While it's true that this isn't environment friendly and that's definitely an issue, it's the best thing we currently have until some block chain technology is proven to be safe. Of course this need more personal to work but that is a relatively small price to pay for fair voting imo.
did you watch vid?
How is ticking multiple boxes of writing anything on it making it invalid a problem? It just doesn't get counted since the person didn't make clear who they are voting for and the final count shows how many were invalid.
What about eraser marks that doesn't look different from the new mark
0:16 Did they just rick roll all of us?
0:29 Oh wait, TWICE
Vox in 2020: But don't worry guys, this election was super secure. Dominion is not vulnerable at all.
Look up " VOTER FRAUD FLASHBACK , 2016: James O' Keef
Offered Eminems Michigan Ballot! " - project veritas.
Then in 2020 you had no voter I'd with mail in ballots.
Getting rick rolled by vox
Still worth it
should've been played when we elected donald trump
Feels bad man :(
ade omara pp
ade omara pp
Why does the US use voting machines in the first place? Pure pen&paper voting with pure manual counting works fine for Germany, Europe's most populous country. Germany also does not have lines at the polling places because there are enough of them. Somehow the US manages to be at the same time more modern and less efficient.
This is a case of finding something that wasn't broken (Pencil and paper voting) and 'fixing' it until it is.
Innovation that makes things worse is not innovation at all.
And that's even when all votes take place on sundays and not during the week where a majority of voters got to go to work and everyone who is eligible is automatically enrolled for voting.
frankbauerful
Less efficient?
IMO, use of polling machine would be over all better.
The problem Vox presented was that the polling machine was too old and not whether it's good or bad
Yep I said much the same-seems to work fine here in Scotland/U.K. too
Meikho Deli Why do I always see footage of people standing in line on voting day in the US? When I go to vote in Germany it literally only takes five minutes.
This video aged well
Like milk.
This seems relevant
Just do what the UK does: paper only, absolutely no machines involved.
Then you have people counting which can be "influenced" and you have human errors.
You have people drawing cross, circles, artwork, leaving blank, writing comments etc.
Lucretius and those are binned-if it’s not a cross within the box which is CLEARLY STATED and someone dumbass circles it then it’s a spoiled ballot-tough on them
Lucretius also as for the influence-if you have enough counters they can’t be influenced as once one counter is finished it gets passed to the next etc....sometimes simpler is better
It really doesn't matter. Because our vote doesn't count anyway.
yes, a paper and pencil in a country spanning a continent with 330 million people. I don't understand if people know that Europe and America are different. I think they just feel like its the same and go "well if they can do it, just copy them!" While Germany can, right now, make a law changing how elections are held, the USA has to do that 51 times, because unlike Europe, Elections are controlled by States only, not the United States. A state like Wyoming would be happy to have paper and pen ballot, Texas? not so much.
Why not just use a pencil and paper like in the UK?
Nah that would be stupid! They really outsmarted us europeans there . Right?
Because USA has a population greater than 300 million. And it is logistical nightmare to count them.
..or in Germany
Ratna Saha they have also more people to count them, and adding them together is easy as well.
Australia too, never seems to have any problems
haha and these same people say that Trumps claims are wild conspiracy theory and that there's no evidence. Oh the hypocrisy.
In every claim that he has presented to the Supreme Court, local courts and the Senate, the same claim of fraudulent voting practices have been disproven. Look at that Supreme Court case that closed about 1 week ago, or how about the District County Court of Georgia that proved voting fraud was a nigh impossibility? How about the recount in Nevada that then proved Biden as being the President-Elect? You’re choosing to ignore factual information to blindly follow an unjust leader.
0:29 lol there’s a really funny Easter egg hidden in Top left corner
Well played, congratulations.
What I didnt catch that can you please tell?
It’s meant to be a rickroll
lol it’s another r/whooosh!
I almost fell for it lol
Wow... no words. I’m so glad Australia has a national body called the ‘Australian Electoral Commission’ that facilitates all elections. All Local, State and Federal elections are done the same way, every time - using paper and pencil and votes are submitted into secure boxes and manually counted and tallied. Any citizen can work for them (I did once for a Federal election just to check the process out) both on a booth and counting after closure and the process is completely transparent. It’s old school but it works. Technology is sometimes not the answer.
good old great britain
Greetings from Germany, where we still have paper ballots and you just have to make an X.
Votes are counted by volunteers and everyone is allowed to watch the process.
We also have an automatic universal voter registration from age 16.
The US system feels not very trustworthy!
Australia here. We use pencil and paper and we have the far more complicated (and way better) preferential voting system. I believe we pay our counters, but each party can also provide volunteer scrutineers who are allowed to watch and raise disputes.
Works pretty great here too.
shraka Identical situation in Italy.
+Shi’thead Miyagi
Oh and to ad, last time I checked, we had around 8000 rapes per year in Germany, while there were 90000 in the US.
Sure the US has a population of 4.5 times that of Germany, but still the raperate is much higher than in Germany.
In that awful new years eve 2 years ago we had 24 rapes all over Germany and that is unacceptable, but we could have something like that every week and still would be a safer country than the US.
And this is the case with almost every form of crime except bike theft, which is a bigger issue in Germany, than in the US.
+Shi’thead Miyagi
"First, those are self reported and probably most of them are untrue allegations."
And the % of reported "untrue allegations" are probably in the same ballpark in both countries, which doesn't change the rate, which shows the irony of talking down the safty of one of the safest countries in the world.
People talk about "no go areas" in Germany, in cities with high crime like Frankfurt am Main, but they are still safer than the safe cities in the US.
This whole discussion would be funny if it wouldn't be so sad.
My neighbour is from the US and his family and friends in the US are worried for him and are afraid to visit, as they get scared by all the fake news, while in reality the safe places in their county is less safe than the "no go zones" in Germany.
"Your country does it to give itself a pat on the back."
Nope it is just a constitutional duty for some (like me) and a christian duty for others (like Merkel).
Most of them have an asylum status without a chance of ever getting a German citizanship. (And I doubt they will change the law any time soon to change this)
Last year there were a couple of cases of kids who were born in Germany and lived in Germany for 15 years, who got deported, as their parents came as refugees. How much sense that makes is argumable, but the idea of an "islamic republic of Germany" is laughable ignorant.
Studies in Germany have shown that those muslims find jobs at the same rate as immigrants on average have done in the past.
Of course the newspapers write "only 2% of them find a job", while the studies conclusion was that 20% each year find a job (but the newspapers prefered to write 2% and ignored the "each month" qualifier).
"60s and 70s Middle East was thriving and very progressive"
Thriving? There was a reason why they came to Germany and the reason wasn't cause their countries were "thriving".
+Chris Read
*_The US is more religious than Germany_*
Yes, but I was talking about the politics specifically. I've seen some city hall discussion about biology text books and the idea to get rid of evolution or to teach creationism in biology is scary to say the least.
Sure the governing party in Germany is the CDU (christian democratic union) with Merkel (daughter of a priest, who opposes same sex marriage based on her believes) as their leader and the CSU (chistian social union) and overall religion has quite some influence, but not even close to that of the US and many times the influence is peaceful.
Merkel for example was critizised by her christian base, after she has said "I'm happy/joyful, that Osama bin Laden is dead", after the US killed him.
The critizism was, that a true christian shouldn't feel joy/happyness over the death of an other human being, no matter who they was. (the whole love your enemy thing)
But regarding science and laws, religious has much less influence than in the US.
Now there is no problem with machines.
This aged well.
We don't even use voting machines in Nebraska. You literally fill in a bubble with a black ballpoint pen.
*NO* I will not stand for this! This is wrong, I must change this! *I am of course talking about the rick roll*
I make sure it's still a thing. I rickroll on a regular basis.
Why is Vox quiet about the 2020 elections?
It's weird because like when I was in middle school and high school we used voting machines to cast our votes for prom king/queen and student council. Then when I moved away I was using the same votings machines in a different state, then moved back to the same district I went to high school in and we were using paper ballads on a scantron sheet.
Will it be solved if we give them guns?
Umesh Patil lol
Yes, let's shoot those old machines in the name of our rights! (Well if they all were broken beyond repair they'd need to buy new ones.)
maybe you could return to paper & gunpowder to write with :)
HEHEHE I AM A SUPAH STAR SUMMONAH Just so you know shooting it is “illegal”
MERICA
What are they doing with all that money? How much do these voting machines actually cost, and how many do they actually need?
It sounds like somebody is getting rich holding the elections hostage.
ElyssaAnderson $2,500-$3,000 each and the National Conference of State Legislatures says that states should budget for 1 machine per 250-300 registered voters....so if we us my home state of Virginia as an example in 2017 we had 5,489,530 registered voters so that means at minimum they would have to replace and or buy 21,958 machines which would cost $54,895,300
Two-Face - Wow, that's the best answer I've ever received from a RUclips comment. Thanks!
I could build one out of a Raspberry Pi Zero and some spare components for probably $50. And it would easily least decades. Under mass production, there's no reason why something similar should cost more than about $30.
But this is an election we're talking about. Billions of dollars riding on the election, so the voting machines need to be very high tech. I mean, the US could just vote with paper ballots, removing these problems, but maybe that's a bit too far-fetched
Government is terrible at technology design though. And these are essentially fancy adding machines. And most technology ages and deteriorates quicker than milk. Especially the ill-designed where simply saying a bad word near it will make it error out.
when the rickroll video played I thought this whole video was a troll lmao
Screw y'all. I loved the rick rollin' intro. And I bet I wasn't the only one.
The Travis and Blanco County comparison is extremely misleading. Blanco spent just over 4 dollars per resident and Travis spent spent $1.40 per resident
718Gilbert exactly! I saw that and was like wait a second. After some quick math we see Blanco county is spending almost 3 times as much per capita than Travis county. Not sure why the misleading narrative was needed.
Vox isn't about education, it's about pushing a narrative.
718Gilbert You need to look at the massive difference in population. One has a million the other 11,000. You're going to need a minimum amount of machines to allow the voting to take place. So with more people it's cheaper as the cost is spread wider.
718Gilbert economies of scale bud
Max Oldendorff
And because we don't know how much economies of scale help in this instance, we can't know whether each county is spending an appropriate amount.
Rick = goood
America please use paper.
In France you take a paper per candidate, go into the isolation booth, put one paper in the envelope, come out, put the envelope in the urn and done. If you write on paper it’s not counted. If you put two papers it’s not counted
Simple and easy.
Tom Scott has a great Video about it :)
ruclips.net/video/w3_0x6oaDmI/видео.html
vonigner Then somebody goes to count it and they decide that your voting for someone else. It’s called corruption.
Questionable Choices Inc. we have a similar system in the uk except we put a cross on the ballot next to the person we want to vote for. All of the votes are counted in front of representatives of all parties to ensure that corruption is minimal. There is no way of knowing that the machine even counted your vote.
But they're working perfect now... got it
I refuse to vote with voting machines. But I live in the UK and that's my right.
I know my local election board used to use some voting machines that were an old punchcard system that was bought 100 years ago, they never replaced them cause they just worked. However they did eventually start breaking down from age, so they had to upgrade to computer operated machines
those seem like the only voting machines that are safe.
Does anyone really expect this problem to get better? America's so divided we can't even agree that a voter ID should be necessary to vote.
You had to hit me with the *rick roll* didn't you
Ah this is sort of like that John Oliver video.
yeah...
except by his extreme british extremism..
.
America: We got problem with our voting machines!
India: Allow us to introduce ourselves!
We have the best ones
Ours is much superior.
@@theowleyes07Doesn't matter cause our govt. is more corrupt
@@amazinghannure6440 you are basically trying to sum up every developing country, US too suffered with corrruption in the beginning.
Vox just rickrolled us with the intro, thanks Vox! 😂
This video is a threat to our democracy
I can see in the comment section how west Europeans are suggesting for papers and pencil but don't forget the fact of population difference which in western european countries is almost a fraction of what it is in america... I believe their are better methods like the evm+vvpat in India... It might work much better...
In Sweden we still use simple paper ballots counted by hand! Works greats! 😊👍🏼
Didn't expect to get Rick rolled
Bro I got Rick Rolled by a news company.
“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
― Joseph Stalin
That's right. "Large scale meddling would be almost impossible."
1:42 John Bolton and the same big ass mustache 17 years ago.
Super interesting and informative video, thanks again Vox!
Imagine getting Rick Rolled in election.
I love how this aged
It doesn't surprise me that the first thing hackers tried to do with voting machines was to play Rick Astley.
Did they really have to play that song during the intro? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Where is this now?
You should get help from Indian election Commission
More like Modi's personal assistant?
rick astley didn't tour michigan, wisconsin, or pennslyvania either. lol.
Something I noticed: Alabama, a republican state, has newer machines in traditionally republican counties. Only the the democratic counties have old machines. Hmm...
Although this may sound ancient, the place where I vote in SoCal uses paper ballots with a small ink stamp and you literally just go through the whole ballot stamping yes or no. I like it that way, I feel like my ballot is real and it’s not tamperable.
How about that
In Germany we use something that is called "Paper". You can Write on it with a "Pen" and it shows exactly what you had written on in.
Imagine getting rick rolled by a voting machine just voting
Isnt a paper and a pen all you need?
2:00 Oh look, it seems he is showing a disputed ballot to two observers. What a great idea. Pity Pennsylvania decided it wasn't.
All voter fraud that has been claimed within Pennsylvania has been debunked by every court imaginable, why can’t you just take the L and move on?
@@keyboardkyle1898 HOW DARE YOU BE SKEPTICAL!!! WHEN MY PREFERRED CANDIDATE WINS YOU CANT DOUBT HIS VICTORY!!!!!
@@keyboardkyle1898 oh, you mean the courts run by democrats and rinos that threw out the lawsuits instead of hearing any part of them and not even conducting any sort of investigation? what a great rebuttal you got there
Florida in 2000 decided by 537 vote it's reasonable to have a recount. The situation in 2020 election is much different Trump lose by ten thousand of votes in Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia. Plus there's not a single evidence of widespread voter fraud ( Trump Dept of Justice ). Unless you're believe what Mike Lyndell says.
Florida in 2000 decided by 537 vote it's reasonable to have a recount. The situation in 2020 election is much different Trump lose by ten thousand of votes in Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia. Plus there's not a single evidence of widespread voter fraud ( Trump Dept of Justice ). Unless you're believe what Mike Lyndell says.
0:28 did you just rick-roll me?
Did they just Rick roll me
Americans just got to learn how to use a pen and put a X
VOX! You Rickroll'ed me where I least expected! God Damnit!
VOX! can't believe you just Rick Rolled me lol
my mum blasts that song when cleaning the house. does that count nt as a rick roll
It's not April 1st yet, Vox!
Use VVPAT with EVM. Best combo.
Did the map distinguish between counties with machines older than 2008 and counties with no electronic voting by mandate?
You can just tell this is going to be a good video when they play Rick Asley
Hello from November 2020 👋🤣😕😷
Liberals: NO WAY VOTES CAN BE MANIPULATED!
Literally this video: Um....
Almost thought I got Rick rolled
I don’t understand. What’s wrong with crossing a box on a ballot paper? It continues to work just fine here in the UK.
3:55 Blanco county is spending about 3 times as much per voter than Travis county. I wouldn't call Blanco county underfunded. How does this published?
In europe we just put a fcking X next to our option by pen
I want someone to rickroll all of America using these machines LOL
0:28 This part is such an informative part of the video!!
Lol
They shouldn't, electronic voting is a terrible idea. Watch a video by Tom Scott to get the information there.
well well well
“Close enough” The Dude
1:59 shrek, is that you?
For all of those saying JUST USE PAPER AND A PENCIL:
The efficient states use OPTICAL SCAN BALLOTS. So you fill in the circles and then the machine scans the paper and records it digitally. Then it keeps the paper as a back up record. It will also ask you if you want to redo your ballot IF you've made mistakes like 2 people for one position. This gives you the speed of electronic with the transparency/security of paper.
This is what IL and many of the newer states have paid for. (I was a ballot box judge in IL.) They keep the paper copies for 10 years so that they can audit the votes if they need or if someone makes a freedom of information request.
Australia does paper, but for the Senate, all papers are later scanned into a computer to calculate who won, but sounds like a different process, as we have a lot more human checks on the counting/computer input
Right on. That how SF county in California did it too.
I’m fairly certain that there’s a computer totalling vote in Europe, Australia, Canada etc too. I’m sure the don’t have e ppl works with an abacus or making hashmarksyo count vote totals
bxs in Australia, counters unfold all lower house ballots first, at each polling station & put them into piles. They have pre-anticipated the top 2 candidates for that seat & so all votes for those 2 are put into one of those 2 piles. Another person then counts the numbers of papers & puts them into a counted pile & I'm pretty sure they would be separating them by the 100, so they can easily be rechecked later.
All other votes are put into piles for their candidates (or an informal vote pile), counted, recorded & then recounted into 2 piles, for those same 2 candidates, based on preferences (so which of the 2 expected win contenders has a lower number on the ballot).
All votes from a polling booth are sorted in this way, counted by 2 separate people & then results rung through to the AEC, who then make the location & results available to the public/tv stations etc. There is no computers used except possibly a calculator & I can't see anywhere where a computer would speed up the process. Once the totals are at the AEC, obviously then computers etc are used to combine all totals, but that's all publicly available data & is being tallied by all the tv networks at the same speed or faster than the AEC
Once the polling station has completed counting the lower house votes, it then moves on to the upper house. They have an option to vote above or below the line. Most people vote above the line. Those votes are sorted into piles for each party/independent & give a provisional result to tv networks etc. Below the line votes are put into a different pile & are scanned into a computer & counted that way. Above the line votes are also scanned into the computer & once all votes have been scanned, a button is hit & the computer calculates the complete result. So for those, the polling booth counting is really just to give a basic idea, but all papers are taken to a central location & put into the computer there before results are official. Each scanned vote is watched & checked by a human as it scans & if it won't scan, it is manually entered & confirmed by a second human
Well INDIA is much much much better in election voting
Y u Rick roll me?
In ontario, Canada, we have a combination system. You mark the ballot with a X on paper first. Then it is deposited into the machine and read. The ballot remains in the machine for verification later. This tally system allows votes to be counted much quicker with an audit trail which is what we need.
In Australia, we use paper
Rick should've been a US citizen, that way he can be OUR president #Rick4Prez #RickAstley2020
Me to the hacker:so you're a man of culture as well
Ah! Rickrolled once more!
Americans: Can't use Voting Machines
Me laughs in Indian
Rickrolled yo
lol why the hell are we being rickrolled
Got rickrolled again!
Just use paper and a pencil lol
Blockchain the vote
This guy cryptos.
I just got rickrolled on a random video I didn’t even mean to click on
That rick roll tho
Voting seems so complicated in the USA-I understand it’s a larger (by far) country than the U.K. but even if you take a state about the same size/population as the U.K. I suspect there would still be more problems in that state. And I’m only using the U.K. as an example as I live here-we have some problems too but nothing like the US it seems. And I suspect other European countries think the same. Hope you guys get it sorted, sincerely
Teethgrinder 83 Hell, even looking at the European Parliament Elections where there are nearly 400 million eligible voters and has a similar turnout to US elections - if a group of independent countries work seamlessly to hold an election by PENCIL AND PAPER, why can't a single american country do the same?
Rahee Ali exactly!!!!! I wanted to say something similar but I wasn’t sure if that was how it was done all over the various countries-here in Scotland we get our one piece of paper from an official once we hand over our polling card (and I guess for some their ID in certain circumstances) fill it in, fold it and put it in the box which is watched over by another official and boom-done. But of course, not in America lol
I remember in New York we had these huge booths that looked like the drivers seat of a locomotive with levers and dials. Pretty simple actually. You turned the dial to which candidate you wanted to vote for in each race then at the end pull a huge lever and it punched a paper ballot. Then push the lever back and the curtain pulled back for the next person. What they got replaced by was a paper ballot and pencil. Then you have to put it into a scantron machine and it tally up the votes. I'm pretty sure they aren't hooked up to the internet and there's no touch screens or anything else.
Voting in the US isn't complicated at all. Vox is just creating a story where none exists. Our elections are safe and simple.
In the EU, voting is controlled and collected by the EU, in each european nation, the land is small and the population is small. In the USA, the land is big, the population is big and voting rights falls entirely in State power not the United States. so just like how a dictatorship is way more efficient than democracy, having 1 centralized voting committee is more efficient than 51 different ones. That's why "one american" country cannot do it, Europe is more connected than the USA in election (i know surprised).
and PS: with an individual state election, no the UK does not have less problems. State elections are by far the most democratic of any election. The president (governor) is elected by Popular vote (unlike UK), the State leglistature are voted by popular vote by the people directly, (unlike UK lords), and senators are elected directly by popular vote, and House members are elected by each districs in the basis of a Popular vote. Only gerrymandering hempers the House election but given taht you're from UK, i'd suspect you only need to look at UK election map to see how much worse it is in UK than each state.