Cory Doctorow delivers a sharp, necessary correction to the public discourse on election integrity: the machines used to count American votes are objectively flawed, yet the very people who once demanded their removal now defend them to avoid being labeled conspiracy theorists. This piece is notable not for uncovering new technical secrets, but for exposing a dangerous political schism where the defense of democracy has become hostage to partisan identity, leaving voters with systems that are insecure, unverifiable, and ripe for manipulation.
The Historical Pattern of Failure
Doctorow anchors his argument in a decades-long history of regulatory capture and technical incompetence, reminding readers that the current crisis is not a sudden anomaly but a recurring failure of the industry. He recalls the post-Bush v. Gore era, where Congress funded a rush to replace outdated punch-card systems with new touchscreen technology based on a standard that was never actually created. "Rather than designing a new standard, they'd write down the specs of their own products — the same products that were considered so defective they needed to be replaced before the election — and call that the standard," Doctorow writes. This historical context is vital; it shows that the voting machine cartel has long prioritized profit and speed over security, using the guise of standardization to legitimize broken hardware.
The author then details how the industry has historically used legal threats to silence critics, citing the infamous case where Diebold attempted to use copyright law to suppress internal memos admitting their machines were unreliable. "Under Section 512 of the then-new Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Diebold was empowered to send 'takedown notices' to the web hosting providers whose users had posted the memos, and if the web hosts didn't remove the content 'expeditiously,' they would be jointly liable for any eventual copyright damages," he explains. This precedent is crucial for understanding why the industry remains so defensive today. The fact that the industry successfully used the law to hide its own flaws for years suggests that their current resistance to scrutiny is not about protecting the truth, but protecting a business model built on opacity.
The cartel of voting machine companies — who had a long track record of using bullshit legal threats to silence their (mostly progressive) critics — were drafted into The Resistance(TM), and anyone who thought voting machines were trash was dismissed as a crazy person who has been totally mypillowpilled.
The Schismogenic Trap
The most compelling part of Doctorow's analysis is his diagnosis of the current political dynamic as "schismogenesis," a phenomenon where a group defines itself entirely in opposition to its enemy, even if it means adopting the enemy's previously rejected beliefs. He notes that after the 2020 election, a bizarre reversal occurred where critics of voting machines were suddenly branded as traitors simply because they were targeted by conspiracy theories. "Every time Trump promotes another election denier to his cabinet, a federal agency, or a judgeship, the idea that voting machines are garbage becomes more Stop the Steal-coded, even though voting machines are, objectively, garbage," Doctorow observes. This framing is powerful because it separates the technical reality from the political noise, forcing the reader to confront the absurdity of defending flawed technology just to spite a political opponent.
Critics might argue that focusing on technical flaws distracts from the more immediate threat of voter suppression or administrative sabotage, but Doctorow counters that ignoring the hardware's vulnerabilities creates a false sense of security. He points out that Princeton computer scientist Andrew Appel has spent years documenting these defects, yet his warnings are often ignored because they are now associated with the "my pillow" crowd. The danger, as Doctorow puts it, is that "just because some voting machine criticism is conspiratorial nonsense, it doesn't follow that voting machines are good, nor does it follow that every voting machine critic is a swivel-eyed loon."
The Georgia Case Study
Doctorow turns to Georgia to illustrate how this dynamic plays out in real-time, highlighting a specific legislative victory that is now being undermined by the Secretary of State. The state passed a law requiring that the human-readable text on a ballot, not a machine-readable QR code, be the official record of the vote. This was a direct response to the fact that Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) can print one set of choices on the screen and a different set in the QR code, a discrepancy voters rarely catch. "People are even less likely to pull out their phones and scan the QR code to ensure it matches the words on the paper," Doctorow notes, emphasizing the futility of relying on technology that voters cannot verify.
However, the article reveals that Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, is attempting to circumvent this law by using optical character recognition (OCR) software to "audit" the QR codes, a plan Doctorow describes as fundamentally incoherent. He quotes Appel's devastating critique of the plan: "it would be fairly easy for an unsophisticated attacker to alter ballot-image files–just replace the ballots they don't like with copies of the ones they do like." The author argues that this is a classic unforced error, where officials choose a complex, insecure digital solution over a simple, proven one. "Just use their existing Dominion ICP (polling-place) scanners to count preprinted, hand-marked optical-scan 'bubble ballots' that the voter has marked with a pen," Doctorow writes. "This doesn't even require a software upgrade of any kind."
The irony here is palpable: the same officials who claim to be the guardians of election integrity are actively choosing a system that is easier to hack and harder to audit than the alternatives. Doctorow suggests that this is not a conspiracy, but a failure of competence driven by political posturing. "Voting machines suck. Raffensperger sucks. And here's the stupidest part: as Appel explains, there is a much more secure way to do this, and it's very cheap," he concludes. This blunt assessment cuts through the noise, reminding readers that the threat to democracy often comes not from foreign hackers, but from domestic officials who refuse to adopt basic security practices.
Bottom Line
Doctorow's strongest contribution is his ability to disentangle the technical reality of voting machine flaws from the toxic political rhetoric that surrounds them, proving that the machines are insecure regardless of who is using them. The piece's greatest vulnerability lies in its reliance on the assumption that officials like Raffensperger are motivated by incompetence rather than a deliberate strategy to undermine trust, though the outcome for the voter remains the same. As the next election cycle approaches, the most critical takeaway is that defending the status quo of voting technology because it is attacked by the opposition is a recipe for disaster; the only path to a secure election is to demand systems that are transparent, verifiable, and independent of partisan loyalty.