Berwyn resident Marian Schneider – president of the Verified Voting Foundation, a non-governmental organization with a mission to safeguard elections in the digital age – is happy to see the push to reintroduce paper systems to the voting process gain support nationwide, writes Byron Tau for The Wall Street Journal.

This pressure to ensure the outdated election infrastructure is secure from any interference increased after allegations of Russian election meddling in 2016.

As a result, Congress passed a bill in March that allocated $380 million to states to help upgrade and secure their voting systems. The funds will be used on machine upgrades and audits, as well as supporting machines with paper backups or paper ballots.

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“The value of having the voter-marked paper ballot is that it allows you to detect if something happened and to recover from it,” said Schneider.

As a former Pennsylvania election official, Schneider said that interest in election security has grown among both officials and the public.

“I haven’t seen anything like it the whole time people have been working and advocating against these vulnerable machines,” said Schneider. “So that’s a good thing that the issue has been elevated in the consciousness of the press and the public.”

Read more about the return of paper to the voting process in The Wall Street Journal here.

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