Politico names Louisiana one of 14 states where the election system is most at risk of being exploited due to what they deem an insufficient paper trail generated by Louisiana voting machines. The report says the state is one of the few left that has completely paperless voting machines, but Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin says that’s not entirely accurate, nor a weakness.
“Our voting machines are absolutely still the voting machines that we have trusted for quite some time now, since 2005.”
Louisiana was on track to have new machines in many precincts before the 2020 Presidential election, but a dispute over the bidding process put that date out of reach.
Analysts say paper verification of each vote is necessary to combat the possibility of hackers altering election outcomes, but Ardoin says internet hackers aren’t a threat to the system.
“None of our machines have ever touched the internet. They are not programmed with any computer that has ever touched the internet, nor will they be. They are not programmed by outside vendors like they are in other states.”
Ardoin adds you’d have to interact physically with each machine to impact an election in Louisiana at any scale.