How secure are mid-Michigan's elections? It's a question we're asking now that Russia appears to be using Facebook to try and interfere again. FOX 47's Marcus Dash tells us what Ingham County is doing to protect the vote.
As the primary election approaches some people are excited and maybe a little unsettled as they make their way to the polls
"It is troubling in our democracy to have this problem and you never thought you'd have to think about it," said Sarah Weissman.
Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum has been looking into ways to secure the voting system, but she says there's no way to make it impenetrable.
"We mitigate the likelihood of an election being hacked, but having complete security is not something that can be achieved at this time," said Barb Byrum.
Byrum has implemented security techniques she picked up from national cybersecurity committees.
"We have a new election equipment, so a little over a year ago, our technology that was running our elections was run on Windows XP, now we have more current election systems," said Byrum.
Because Michigan uses paper ballots that are put into a machine, they are able to do recounts, and that gives them another tool to help fight potential hacks, something they've done before.
"As we saw, I was able to successfully perform a presidential recount with paper ballots. Michigan is one of the only states that offers paper ballots," said Byrum
While Michigan's paper ballot process can be a little time consuming one voter says she's fine with it if that's what it's going to take to prevent hacking
"I thought we should be in the 21st century with electronic voting, after these debacles that have happened with our elections, I feel more comfortable with paper ballots," said Weissman.
Byrum hopes the changes she's made will help voters feel more comfortable with the process
Ingham County is asking for absentee ballots to be turned in as soon as possible They need to be in by the time polls close at 8 PM on Tuesday.
