A Princeton researcher found that publicly available election records could be combined with AI to link voters to their ballots. Max Springer, a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, tested the potential of identifying voters based on their Georgia ballots using a $20 subscription to an AI large language model and data obtained from an Open Records Act request.
Springer reported, "Within a couple of hours, I had a pipeline to analyze and identify secret ballots across the state of Georgia and the agent told me exactly what further information it would need to identify real voters’ ballots. At no point did the agent refuse to comply or raise concerns over implementing the exploit."
This finding has raised concerns among Georgia’s election officials as early voting approaches for the midterm election, which will determine control of the US Congress. Ballot secrecy is considered a democratic safeguard, allowing voters to protect their choices from potential influence or intimidation. Springer’s test indicated that AI could be used to reveal how individuals voted by utilizing Georgia’s public election records.
In response to these concerns, Georgia’s state elections board convened an emergency meeting to discuss the implications of AI on voter identification through ballot codes. Georgia’s outgoing secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has restricted access to tabulation data that could be used to identify voters, mandating that any public release must redact ID numbers after an election. Ben Adida, an MIT-trained cryptographer and founder of the election technology non-profit VotingWorks, stated that this measure "substantially addresses this flaw" during the board meeting.
Election workers document every voter at polling places, where voters select candidates on a touchscreen that generates a paper ballot. Voters then manually feed their ballots into a scanner for tabulation. Adida explained that when a ballot is inserted into a tabulator, a digital record is created, referred to as a cast vote record (CVR), which is assigned a unique identifier at the time of scanning.
Adida noted that the flaw lies in how the machine records the ballot, as the identifiers are not sufficiently randomized. Springer’s research indicated that he could recover the voting order for 1.52 million ballots, or 98.9% of in-person ballots in 114 of the 139 counties he examined. He stated, "In some of Georgia’s counties, I can determine the exact ballot cast by every voter at the vote centers – ballot secrecy is entirely lost."
In smaller counties, such as Heard County, Springer reported that he could match most of the 650 early in-person voters to specific ballots. Approximately four years ago, election security researchers identified a flaw in the software used by Georgia voters that could link a voter’s identity to their secret ballot. The identifying number assigned to each ballot was implemented to prevent election fraud, but it poses a risk if paired with other information, such as sign-in data or surveillance footage.
Representatives from the secretary of state’s office expressed frustration over the lack of funding to address this issue, citing a political feud between Raffensperger and conservative legislators. Spokesperson Robert Sinners provided documentation of requests for funding to upgrade Georgia’s voting system that have not been fulfilled.
Sinners stated, "We have presented numerous plans to the legislature for this – not just a patch, but an entire overhaul of the software to fix any known vulnerabilities. Guess what we were gifted with from the legislature? A big fat goose egg."
Other states have implemented Dominion software for their elections and have either patched vulnerabilities or restricted access to sensitive voting data. Georgia law mandates both ballot secrecy and transparency for election records, creating a conflict. Elections board member Salleigh Grubbs proposed a draft plan for poll workers to hold ballots in a tray before they are cast to disrupt the order of printed ballots, but this proposal faced skepticism from other board members, including Janelle King, a conservative Republican.
King expressed concerns about retraining election officials and the potential for errors in the ballot handling process. With early voting imminent, Sinners remarked that changes to processes at this stage are "a day late and about $30 million short."