Secret Ballot at Risk: Unpacking Technology’s Hidden Dangers

Researchers are warning that rapid growth in AI is making it essential to properly respond to a flaw in the state of Georgia’s voting equipment that makes it possible for voters to be tied to their ballots after voting.

This vulnerability is especially important as ballot privacy is a right under the state’s constitution. Violations of the constitution could “create an opening for legal challenges,” The Current reports. The researchers note the system flaw does not allow votes to be altered or added.

This vulnerability is nothing new, according to Greater Georgia, an organization dedicated to election integrity and advocacy. “This specific ballot secrecy issue was identified in 2022, and researchers demonstrated its practical significance using records from the May 2026 primary,” a spokesperson told the Daily Signal.

The Role of Technology

Questions about election system vulnerability reached a fever pitch after the 2020 election. Since then, “advances in artificial intelligence have made any vulnerability easier to exploit”, a spokesperson from Greater Georgia said.

As artificial intelligence advances, the role that technology plays cannot be underestimated.

Dr. Andrew Appel, Eugene Higgins Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Princeton University and Visiting Professor at Cornell University, told the Daily Signal that “The failure of the secret ballot—the ability to tell how each voter voted—can occur in any jurisdiction that uses Dominion optical scan voting machines and has updated the software in their voting machines.”

Dominion Voting Systems was a key player in the controversies surrounding alleged system vulnerabilities in the wake of President Donald Trump’s challenging of the 2020 election results.

Fox News was accused of defaming Dominion by “knowingly pushing false conspiracy theories that the voting machine company rigged the 2020 presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor,” ABC News reports. Dominion sued Fox and ended up receiving a settlement of roughly $800 million in 2023.

Since the settlement, Dominion has been bought out and renamed Liberty Vote.

A spokesperson for Liberty Vote told the Daily Signal in an email that “Liberty Vote is a new, 100% American-owned, nonpartisan company formed through the acquisition of Dominion Voting Systems, with new ownership and leadership under former election administrator Scott Leiendecker.”

The spokesperson continued to say, “We intend to earn trust through our own performance, the support we provide election officials and transparency about how our technology works.”

Despite the transition to Liberty Vote, vulnerabilities still need to be addressed. Just as Appel noted the role that software plays in voting equipment, the software flaw creates an opening for ballots to be reorganized into the original order in which votes were cast, The Current reports.

In addition, The Current reports that “Along with other publicly available data, that information could be used to match voters to their ballots, the researchers wrote.”

As Dr. M.V. (Trey) Hood III, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia and director of the Survey Research Center, told the Daily Signal, “None of this should be happening—the ability to link a voter to a ballot shouldn’t be happening.”

Software Update Loading…

Last month, during the State Election Board’s meeting, member Salleigh Grubbs submitted a rule that would have mandated Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to implement the software update suggestion from the manufacturer.

“Each (voter) has one vote, and no one is entitled to know how it was cast. That privacy protects more than the individual voter. It protects the integrity of the entire election,” Grubbs said.

However, despite the proposal, an agency lawyer asserted that the software update had not been verified by Raffensperger, in addition to citing the time constraints that the update would require, and the funding needed to move forward.

The board did not move forward with Grubbs’ suggestion, due to concerns surrounding a lack of authority to mandate actions from the secretary of state, in addition to concerns about a lack of time to implement the update.

The Path Forward

In the end, “The protection of the secret ballot, in the United States since 1890, is especially meant to be protection against county insiders,” Appel said.

Ultimately, “Georgia has a great opportunity to ensure this loophole is closed as it considers the purchase of the state’s next voting system,” Greater Georgia said.

And while the future of the state’s next voting system remains unclear, Liberty Vote is “going to adopt new standards for a voting system in the future…They’re going to replace the ballot-marking devices with … tabulators,” Don Palmer, Senior Legal Fellow for Election Integrity at Heritage, told the Daily Signal.

System flaw aside, Georgia ranks #6 among all 50 states and Washington, D.C. on The Heritage Foundation’s “Election Integrity Scorecard,” released last week.

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