• Question: Can Dominion voting machines used in Nevada be hacked with a ballpoint pen?
• Response: No. The concern stems from a Georgia trial where a professor hacked a Dominion machine in court.
The Dominion machines in Nevada are different from those in the Georgia case with different software. The Nevada Secretary of State’s office says none of the issues in the Georgia case could happen here. Also, the Georgia hacking was not done in a real-world environment.
Original concern over hacked Dominion voting machines in Georgia
University of Michigan computer science professor Alex Halderman testified in a federal trial recently in Georgia about the vulnerability of Dominion voting machines there.
In court before a judge, he inserted a pen into the back of a Dominion voting machine and held it for a few seconds to cause the machine to reboot, according to an article on the Law360 legal website .
Halderman then accessed a “terminal emulator” to bypass the voting machine’s security settings and obtain “super-user” access, where he said he could then change whatever he wanted.