Some experts raise concerns about the US Election Assistance Commission's proposed security standards that would allow voting machines with wireless hardware
BOSTON (AP) — Leaders of the federal agency overseeing election administration have quietly weakened a key element … Tweets: @rad_atl Tweets: Richard DeMillo / @rad_atl : EAC on surprise weakening of voting system security chain by allowing wireless hardware: “Yes we know it weakens the chain by adding this weak dangerous link, but don't be so small-sighted. Look at all these other pretty little links we are giving you.” https://apnews.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This proposal lands after years of documented exposure in US election infrastructure: reporting ahead of the 2018 midterms catalogued severe vulnerabilities across the system (pre-midterm vulnerability interviews), and Election Systems and Software was forced to admit to Sen. Wyden that machines sold from 2000–2006 carried a remote-access feature it had earlier denied (ES&S's remote-access admission).
Against that record, the Election Assistance Commission's draft standards would open the door to wireless hardware inside voting machines — a change Richard DeMillo publicly frames as knowingly adding 'a weak dangerous link' to the security chain, traded against other concessions in the package.
First-order effects
- Security experts, DeMillo among them, now have a concrete federal document to attack, shifting the fight from vendor behavior to the certifier itself.
- States that rely on EAC-certified systems face a purchasing decision shaped by standards that would newly bless wireless components they had reason to exclude.
Second-order effects
- Voting equipment vendors gain a compliance path to market wireless-capable machines without bearing the reputational cost alone — the EAC's seal becomes their cover, echoing the pattern where dominant vendors avoided accountability for known flaws.
- Congressional overseers in the Wyden mold get a fresh line of inquiry: why the standards body weakened its own chain, and which vendors lobbied for it.
Third-order effects
- If the EAC certifies weaker systems, trust migrates toward state-level rules and independent scrutiny — the kind of researcher stress-testing the major vendors later opened up to counter conspiracy theories — leaving the federal standard as a floor rather than a guarantee.
- The episode hardens a structural split in election administration: the certifier optimizing for adoptability, the security community optimizing for attack surface, with public confidence caught between them.
The trend: US election security is becoming a contest over who sets the baseline — federal certifiers loosening standards while researchers and state officials tighten de facto ones around them.