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The truth about voting machine security in the 2024 election
On Oct. 3, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting technology used in the 2020 election. She wasn’t trying to finesse the count, though, she was trying to prove someone else had. Spoiler: They hadn’t.
Peters’ actions turned her into the celebrity face of a movement, one casting doubt on the deeply complex mechanics of how one’s vote is counted and vetted, all with the goal of reinstating former president Donald Trump as commander-in-chief. The echoing effects of such conspiracies will be felt again in 2024, using the internet and the public’s awareness of the technology’s vulnerabilities, to once again call the process into question.
As part of this distrust campaign, conservative figureheads, including Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have demanded the use of paper ballots in the upcoming presidential election, arguing the analog voting process (which offers a physical record of the count) is a more secure bet for vote tabulating. Elon Musk, accompanying Trump on the campaign trail, has continued to claim that voting machines are used to rig elections digitally and has asked that counties hand count paper ballots insteads. What the public may not realize is that just about every state already uses paper ballots. According to estimates by the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, 98 percent of ballots cast this year will be on paper.
Derek Tisler, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, co-authored the center’s recent report on the state of paper ballots and has worked extensively in election security and voting machine infrastructure.
“There is just more attention on the mechanics of election administration,” Tisler said, “in a way that there never was before 2020.” Where once people’s awareness of their vote started and ended with how to cast a ballot, “Now, there is so much more attention on who is running the elections and what the entire voting process looks like, from registration to the day that results are final. That is having different impacts on different people.”
Our nation operates what is essentially 50 different electoral processes at once during a presidential election, Tisler says, generating an abundance of rules, guidelines, and mechanics that are in need of constant adjustment in order to create clear and reliable information for voters. Working against this process is rampant conspiratorial thinking by many Americans, built on misconceptions and stoked by rampant fear-mongering — some, like Tisler and other election security experts, view this state of disinformation as the bigger democratic concern.
America’s voting machine obsession
Historically, public confidence in elections — and technology’s role — has fluctuated. The controversial “hanging chad” issue of the 2000 presidential election resulted in a push for the digitization of the voting process. As a result, advancing tech, like electronic poll books and machines, have made the system more convenient and accessible for many, including those with disabilities and non-English speakers, and has, overall, improved accuracy. It’s also cut down costs on a system that relies heavily on a labor force of volunteer citizens.
But foreign interference in the 2016 election, hacking and disinformation attempts in the 2020 election, and continued incredulity thrown at elections by right-wing leadership, have complicated the matter. Lingering fears of interference and unfounded conspiracy theories about things like mail-in voting, poll observers, and (allegedly) rampant fraud, have made the field of information even hazier.
It is your community who is running those elections. It is your neighbors… It’s those people who are stepping up to make this process happen.
At the center of the controversy rests the nation’s “voting machine crisis,” featuring a dearth of modernized machine units and an abundance of outdated machines that couldn’t stand up to security risks. Some machines, known as optical scanning machines, simply record hand-penned ballots. Others, direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, use touch screens and store votes in the machine’s internal memory. The latter attempted to correct the accounting issues of the former, but country and state software systems for DREs unveiled a new problem: foreign and domestic cyberattacks taking advantage of outdated machines.
“Some Republicans have spread lies that election machinery is rigged and not to be trusted but there is no evidence to support that,” Darrell West, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute Governance Studies program and disinformation researcher, told Mashable. “There were many lawsuits in 2020 and there was no evidence that voting equipment malfunctioned or did not record votes properly.”
Following the 2020 results, election tech manufacturers Dominion and Smartmatic USA were accused of enabling a “stolen” election by changing or deleting votes on such machines. But these claims were unfounded, with both companies recently settling defamation lawsuits against the individuals and media networks that popularized the accusations. “It’s completely predictable that a lot of the confusion, even conspiracy theories, have centered on technology — on the voting machines themselves,” said Tisler. “Anytime you are talking about computers, it is difficult for the average person to understand what exactly is happening and how it works.”
This is exacerbated by inflammatory comments like Musks’, insinuating that voting machines are easily hacked machinery able to be manipulated by anyone with computer knowledge. “They are tested extensively and not connected to the internet so [they] cannot be hacked. People should feel secure that their votes will be recorded fairly and accurately,” said West.
Foreign interference through phishing schemes, personal data leaks, and breaches of proprietary systems operating election tech are enough to prompt ongoing pressure on government leaders to build a more secure and transparent security protocol. But, as experts have routinely said, it’s not enough to question the process entirely, despite urging from conspiracy theorists.
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In 2018, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission allocated $380 million toward improving federal election administration, enhancing election technology, and improving election security, as part of the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA). More than $100 million of that was intended for voting equipment upgrades, but few counties had adequate resources to overhaul. Another $800 million investment in 2023 has attempted to fill in the gaps and push the majority of jurisdictions over the bureaucratic hump.
The Brennan Center has calculated a near $300 million dollar budget to replace voting equipment, which will only increase as current machines also age out. That’s to be expected, however. Just as consumers phase out their personal devices for the latest models, election tech must evolve. Voters’ knowledge has to evolve, as well.
Building back trust in the electoral process
General trust in the government has been low for decades. In 2023 polling by the Pew Research Center, 22 percent of Americans expressed trust in a fair government. That’s up from only 16 percent in 2022.
Recent cybersecurity findings suggest continued vulnerabilities in systems storing sensitive public records and legal documents. Another fear-inducing headline: A vulnerability in the state of Georgia’s voter registration cancellation portal, allowing malicious actors to disenfranchise swaths of voters, prompting widespread concern of collusion.
Renewed public interest in the mechanics of the electoral process, Tisler explained, is a positive shift, but creates rippling issues. “This is what elections are all about, participation,” he said. “But like with anything, you are also going to have people who use that information to cast doubt on the process.”
In pursuit of addressing those very actors, Tisler explained, government and election officials have focused more intensely on transparency, opening up voters to the logistics of running a nationwide vote. Some have invited residents into the physical spaces where they work, observing voting machine tests or visiting offices. Others have taken to social media, live streaming preparation and even counts.
We are never wholly dependent on technology. We are never wholly dependent on humans.
Too much information, however, isn’t helpful without understanding, Tisler said. “People need context for what is happening,” he urged. “It’s not enough that you can see what is happening, if you don’t understand the actual steps that are taking place and why they are so important to holding a secure, accurate election.”
Meanwhile, advocacy groups and security experts continue to emphasize the importance of clarity and simplicity, beginning and ending with paper.
Don’t worry: Your vote will be counted.
Americans shouldn’t feel disinclined to vote in 2024 because of technological skepticism, said Tisler. “Without a doubt, the technology is much more secure, much more reliable, than it was even a decade ago,” he stated. In fact, according to the country’s cybersecurity leaders, they should have more confidence that this year’s election is safe from outside threats.
“It is your community who is running those elections. It is your neighbors. It is people who share so many of your values and your experiences,” said Tisler. “It’s those people who are stepping up to make this process happen. Sometimes, when there is a lot of passion, a lot of anxiety and tension, it’s often difficult to keep all that in perspective.”
Fears of voting machines and count accuracy, spurred by anti-computer comments like those of Musk, have grown to eclipse other election concerns. Attempts to undermine the election before ballots are cast, through mass disinformation campaigns, generative AI, or even the simple suggestion that our process can’t be trusted, have the potential to sow as much mistrust as a genuine cyberattack. Just as big of a risk: Threats of physical violence on election day. But integrity experts and federal officials, including the State Department, have been preparing for it all. And paper has remained an essential part of the process.
People should feel secure that their votes will be recorded fairly and accurately.
“Disinformation is a serious threat because so many people want to believe negative things about the other party,” said West. “Some officials spread lies to sow doubt and make people cynical about the political process. There also are foreign entities that have incentives to spread lies in order to disrupt American elections. They want to turn people against one another.” Meanwhile, West assures, “paper ballots are guarded night and day in order to maintain the integrity of vote counting. There are Republican and Democratic poll watchers who make sure the other party does not engage in any shenanigans.”
According to Verified Voting, a nonprofit focused on responsible voting technology and paper ballot advocacy, almost 70 percent of counties nationwide will use hand marked paper ballots for the majority of voters. Around 25 percent will use ballot marking devices, an electronic version of a ballot that creates a paper record and doesn’t store vote counts on the machine, often used for voters with disabilities. Only 5 percent of counties exclusively use DRE machines.
Only two states, Louisiana and Texas, contain counties with completely paperless voting systems. Election-deciding swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — all maintain paper records, which are used in post-election audits in 48 states. Paper records include actual paper ballots filled out by hand, as well as printed paper ballots for voters to review after they place their vote on a machine.
Voters can also learn about the specific machines and voting processes at their polling site ahead of the election. Verified Voting’s “Verifier” database provides a breakdown of the type of voting equipment used in each county.
Tisler recommends concerned voters read through the center’s Roadmap to the Official Count, which explains the entire process in administering and validating a presidential election, step-by-step.
“The election process is a system of checks and balances,” reassured Tisler. “There is somebody who is constantly making sure that everything is working how it should. They’re checking, double checking, triple checking. We are never wholly dependent on technology. We are never wholly dependent on humans. The tech and the human component are working side by side the entire time.”
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NASAs incredible new telescope will offer an atlas of the universe
NASA has completed its next space observatory, built to create sharp, panoramic maps of the universe while revealing how the most mysterious, invisible substances and distant worlds shape the cosmos.
About a quarter-century after the Hubble Telescope reshaped astronomy, and a few years into the era of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will join them not as a replacement, but as a big-picture partner. Where Hubble and Webb zoom in for close‑ups, Roman will capture Hubble‑like detail across areas about 100 times larger, turning isolated snapshots into sweeping surveys that show the very scaffolding of the universe.
At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, engineers are wrapping up prelaunch testing on the cutting-edge telescope. Next, the observatory will travel 900 miles to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where teams will prepare it for launch.
That could happen as early as this September, about eight months ahead of schedule, NASA managers said at a news conference on Tuesday, April 21. Once in space, Roman will head to a stable orbit about 1 million miles from Earth, near the same region where Webb orbits the sun, and begin a years‑long campaign of deep space imaging.
“We didn’t want to wait to launch the Nancy Grace Roman. We’re eight months ahead of schedule,” said Nicky Fox, NASA’s associate administrator of science. “Everybody felt the urgency. Everybody was sprinting towards this.”
Named for Nancy Grace Roman, who became the agency’s first chief of astronomy and one of its earliest female executives, the telescope reflects a legacy of opening new windows on the universe from above Earth’s atmosphere. Nicknamed the “mother of Hubble,” Roman helped lay the groundwork in the 1960s for a whole fleet of space telescopes.
A wide shot of the dark universe
At the heart of the mission is Roman’s eight-foot-wide mirror, the same size as Hubble’s, paired with a powerful camera that sees in infrared light, like Webb. That camera’s field of view is Roman’s superpower. In a single shot, it can image vast swaths of sky that Hubble simply can’t match.
Because a space telescope can only see one patch of sky at a time, it has to take many separate “pointings” — individual shots aimed at slightly different spots — and stitch them together into a mosaic.
In 2023, Ami Choi, an astrophysicist and scientist for Roman’s wide field camera, contrasted the difference between Hubble and the new telescope. To photograph the Andromeda Galaxy, Hubble has to take 400 smaller images and stitch them together. For Roman’s camera, that should only take two pointings, she said.
This wide, sharp vision is what scientists need to study the so-called “dark universe.” Ordinary matter — the stuff that makes up stars, planets, and even people — accounts for only about 5 percent of the cosmos. The bulk of it is dark matter and dark energy, which do not emit light but leave clues where they’ve influenced space’s expansion and the arrangement of galaxies.
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“Current observations hint that our standard model of the universe is incorrect,” said Julie McHenry, senior project scientist, referring to cosmologists’ best recipe for the universe. “Roman will be able to confirm these and set us on the path to understanding what’s right.”
Roman will trace those clues in several ways at once. By mapping the positions and shapes of hundreds of millions of galaxies, it will show how structures have grown from the early universe to today. Subtle distortions in galaxy shapes will reveal how clumps of invisible space stuff bend their light on the way to us, exposing the hidden dark matter. At the same time, Roman will discover and track large numbers of a special kind of exploding star, known as Type Ia supernovas; their predictable brightness lets astronomers measure how quickly space has expanded over time.
Imaging large space targets, such as the Andromeda Galaxy, will require far fewer smaller images to stitch together than other flagship observatories.
Credit: NASA composite image
Taken together, these measurements will allow scientists to test competing ideas about dark matter, dark energy, and even the laws of gravity themselves with far greater precision than ever before. Other observatories can make similar kinds of measurements, but none combines Roman’s sharpness and sky coverage in the infrared, NASA mission leaders say, which lets it see more distant and dust-covered galaxies.
A new census of distant exoplanets
Roman’s wide‑field power also makes it skilled at exoplanet hunting. Previous missions like Kepler and TESS mostly found planets close to their stars, where their repeated crossings dim starlight in a regular rhythm. Roman will focus on a different region of planetary systems: the cooler, outer zones, where worlds similar to Jupiter and Saturn reside. It may even find wandering planets that aren’t tethered to stars.
To do this, Roman will repeatedly monitor dense star fields toward the center of our Milky Way. As a foreground star passes in front of a more distant one, its gravity will briefly magnify the background star’s light. If the foreground star carries planets, they can produce smaller, telltale blips in that brightening. This technique, called microlensing, works best in precisely the kind of crowded, faint, and distant regions that Roman is expected to capture.
Optical Engineer Bente Eegholm inspects the primary mirror for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Credit: NASA / Chris Gunn
Over its mission, Roman will attempt to record thousands of these microlensing events, revealing planets at distances and masses other surveys mostly miss. From that haul, astronomers will compare our solar system’s architecture with many others and judge whether having inner rocky worlds and outer giant planets is the status quo or something more rare.
Roman will also test an advanced coronagraph — a system of masks and mirrors that blocks a star’s glare so the telescope can try to see the faint glow of planets around it. On Roman, this is more of a technology trial than an everyday science instrument, but if it works, it will set the stage for a future observatory whose main goal is to directly image Earth‑like worlds around other sun‑like stars.
“What astronomers can do today with coronagraph instruments is see planets that are maybe a million times fainter than their stars,” Vanessa Bailey, NASA’s Roman coronagraph scientist, told Mashable. “What we’re doing with the Roman coronagraph is hopefully getting to 10 million to 100 million times fainter, maybe even a little bit more, in the best case scenario.”
Catching the universe in motion
Roman is also built for studying how the sky changes, creating a veritable library of “before” and “after” shots.
Technicians assemble the solar panels on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Credit: NASA / Sydney Rohde
One of its major surveys will repeatedly scan high‑latitude regions of the sky, away from the plane of the Milky Way. By returning to the same fields every few days, Roman will catch supernovas as they ignite and fade, watch black holes light up as they feed on nearby material, and uncover other short-lived, dramatic events across the distant universe. Its infrared vision will reveal explosions and flares that dust clouds hide from visible‑light telescopes.
Another core program will stare toward the Milky Way’s central bulge. There, Roman will track how the brightness of millions of stars rises and falls on timescales of minutes to months. Those records will not only power the microlensing planet search but also expose other phenomena, such as neutron stars and black holes.
Because Roman will cover such large areas with fine detail, its images will also become a long‑lasting reference tool. When other telescopes later spot something odd — a burst of high‑energy radiation, for instance, or an unusual variable star — astronomers will be able to pull Roman’s earlier images and see what was there before the excitement.
“The images it captures will be so large there is not a screen in existence large enough to show them,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. “Roman will give the Earth a new Atlas of the universe. I think it’s worth pausing for a moment just to think about how really incredible that is.”
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400K MagSafe power banks recalled after fatal fire, the 10th power bank recall in a year
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Casely reannounced a power bank recall this April after a fire linked to the device fatally injured a user. This is the tenth power bank recall in the United States in the last 12 months, and Anker recalled 1.5 million power banks in 2025.
The recall affects an estimated 429,200 Casely 5,000-mAh MagSafe Power Pods (Model E33A), which were originally recalled in 2025. The MagSafe power banks need to be completely replaced.
Back of Casely power banks.
Credit: CPSC
Affected customers should stop using the portable power banks immediately. They can also contact Casely to receive a free replacement.
“The recalled lithium-ion battery in the power banks can overheat and ignite, posing risk of serious injury or death from fire and burn hazards to consumers,” the CPSC stated on its recall website.
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The Brooklyn-based company is reannouncing the recall after receiving 51 reports of the lithium-ion battery overheating, expanding, and/or catching fire while charging smartphones, “resulting in six minor burn injuries.”
However, in the past year, the CPSC says 28 more reports have been made, including explosions that caused a serious accident on an airplane and one death.
In August 2024, a 75-year-old woman from New Jersey, was charging her cell phone with the power bank on her lap when it caught on fire and exploded. The victim suffered second and third degree burns and later passed away from complications from her injuries. In February 2026, a 47-year-old woman was charging her cell phone with the power bank on an airplane when it caught on fire and exploded, resulting in the victim suffering first degree burns.
How to check your Casely Power Pod
Worried you may own one of the 429,000 recalled power banks? It’s easy to check if your device is included in the recall.
On the back of the device, look for the device’s model number, as show in a picture provided by the CPSC. If the model number reads “E33A,” then stop using the device immediately.
Look for the model number.
Credit: CPSC
More information on requesting a replacement power bank is available on the CPSC and Casely recall websites.
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The new Dyson Supersonic Travel is the cheapest Supersonic yet
Table of Contents
Nearly three years ago, I asked if the (then) $429 Dyson Supersonic was still worth the price of entry.
These days, with the Supersonic line having expanded, the standard model having increased in price to $449.99, and the most expensive version of the hair dryer topping out at $549.99, it’s a question that feels even more apt.
The good news? If you’re not super into the idea of spending about $500 for a hair dryer, Dyson just announced the Dyson Supersonic Travel, a $299.99 model of its famous hair tool. In addition to its lower price point, it comes with more travel-friendly proportions and features.
As someone who’s personally tested Supersonics (and their many dupes), I took a closer look at the latest Dyson beauty launch to gather everything you need to know.
The design differences of the Dyson Supersonic Travel
In short, the Supersonic Travel is the standard Supersonic but smaller. According to Dyson, that comes out to exactly 32 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than the OG Supersonic. In other words, it’s 0.7 pounds to the standard Supersonic’s 1.8 pounds, and 8.7 inches tall to the larger model’s 10 inches.
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This model also comes with one attachment, the styling concentrator, a la the now-discontinued Dyson Supersonic Origin (which ran for $399.99). For comparison, the $449.99 Supersonic comes with three attachments: a styling concentrator, diffuser, and wide-tooth comb. For all five attachments, you’ll have to shell out $549.99.
The Supersonic Travel is compatible with all original and Supersonic Nural attachments.
Credit: Dyson
The same attachments can be used between the Travel, original, and Supersonic Nural dryers. This means opting for the Travel could technically save you some money — individual attachments range from $19.99 to $44.99. If you only use a styling concentrator and diffuser, for instance, the total cost of a Travel dryer with the extra attachment purchase would come out to $344.98, making it still over $100 cheaper than the three-attachment original Supersonic.
The Supersonic Travel is more versatile in some ways, and less so in others
Functionality-wise, the Supersonic Travel is a slightly different product from the other Supersonics in the line. It has anywhere from 1,000 to 1,220 watts of power and an airflow speed of 11.6 liters per second, compared to the 1,600 watts and 13.3 liters per second of the standard Supersonic. In other words, the bigger dryer is slightly more powerful, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect longer dry times.
The standard Supersonic and Supersonic Nural also feature four heats and three air speeds, where the Supersonic Travel features three heats and two air speeds.
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That said, the Supersonic Travel has universal voltage compatibility, so it can be used from 100 to 240 volts, whereas the other Supersonics are locked into 120 volt compatibility.
In terms of its portability, it’s also worth noting the Supersonic Travel weighs the same as the Supersonic r, a professional grade hair dryer (priced as such at $549.99) that’s become more popular due in part to being lightweight and easy to maneuver.
Where to buy the Dyson Supersonic Travel
The Dyson Supersonic Travel is available for $299.99 at Dyson’s website, Amazon, and Best Buy. If you buy at the former, you will receive a complimentary $59.99 travel bag along with the hair dryer.
NASAs incredible new telescope will offer an atlas of the universe
400K MagSafe power banks recalled after fatal fire, the 10th power bank recall in a year
