Russian w/ close ties to Putin bought Maryland voter registration platform

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11. Paper ballots should be required.

We also know that Russians hacked into the voting systems of 39 states. Our election systems are not safe. For the 2018 election, we should all insist on paper ballots (to be held as backup for at least six months instead of being shredded after scanning as some states do). We also need multiple monitors from both major parties overseeing the scanning of completed ballots, as well as a hand count as backup to ensure that the programming of vote totals has not been hacked. Hackers have shown that it takes seconds for them to gain access to the computerized systems that most states use. We do not know whether Russia changed any votes in 2016, but they (or any other hackers) could easily do so. Absent a hand count of paper ballots, independent computer experts should be on hand to monitor the programming at the time vote totals are calculated to ensure that no programming changes undercount or overcount votes from certain precincts. For example, it would be very easy to program the aggregation of votes to count mostly Republican precincts at 1.05% and mostly Democratic precincts at 0.95%, thus changing the outcome in close races. Without precautions like this, we have no way of knowing whether the people the voters choose are the winners and our elections are fair.