Free Speech For People Senior Advisor on Election Security Susan Greenhalgh recently appeared on The Brad Blog to discuss our lawsuit against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for improperly loosening voting system standards after private meetings with voting machine manufacturers. FSFP and renowned election security expert Professor Philip Stark are co-plaintiffs in this case.

“The EAC relies too much on the vendors…The EAC relies on the vendors to get their technical information and expertise. So rather than being an independent source of information regarding the voting systems, the EAC is going to the vendors to ask them the questions to understand how the systems work,” said Greenhalgh.

FSFP had filed an earlier lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, challenging the EAC’s failure to disclose records of its closed-door communications with voting machine vendors that led to last-minute changes in federal voting system guidelines, known as the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). The latest lawsuit seeks to reinstate draft language in the federal voting system guidelines that would have banned technology from voting machines capable of wirelessly connecting to the internet.

“It’s foolish to introduce something like this when we already have a crisis of confidence in our election systems. We need to be doing everything we can to ensure that they are as secure as possible and that the process is transparent and open and belonging to the people because these are our elections. We are the people, these are our elections – and they are doing the exact opposite,” said Greenhalgh

Listen to the full discussion here.

Learn more about our lawsuit here.