Sean Flaherty lives in Iowa City.

Election integrity in Iowa would take a major step backward if Governor Kim Reynolds signs House File 928, a bill that would eliminate a hand recount option for statewide and federal elections. 

If Reynolds signs HF 928, recounts in Iowa would almost always use the same computer equipment and program used to tabulate election night results. 

In the event of a miscount due to malware or computer error, using the same equipment and software in a recount would render the recount worse than useless. 

As she weighs a decision on whether to sign or veto the recount bill, Reynolds should keep in mind a recent Iowa recount, of Pottawattamie County’s primary election in June 2006. A hand recount reversed errors in election system programming that had affected multiple races. The error was obvious from anomalous results, but not every error will be so apparent. TIME magazine quoted Pottawattamie’s then-Auditor, Marilyn Jo Drake, as saying “We were just plain lucky” the programming error produced clearly suspicious results.

Concern about malware corruption of voting systems is legitimate. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard underscored this fact at an April meeting of President Trump’s cabinet. 

Bleeding Heartland readers might view DNI Gabbard’s assessment with skepticism, but her statement is backed by a strong consensus of computer security experts who study voting technology. Even computer scientists who rebuked claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election stated in an open letter, “it is imperative that the US continue working to bolster the security of elections against sophisticated adversaries.”

I joined a group of computer scientists and advocates, including world-renown electronic voting expert Douglas Jones of the University of Iowa, to urge Reynolds to veto HF 928. Our May 21 letter to the governor cited cybersecurity research and expert testimony to Congress showing that even if computer systems are air-gapped from the internet, they are vulnerable to insider attack, supply chain vulnerabilities, and other points of failure.

A hand recount with clear rules and procedures can be done efficiently and well. After the famous 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, decided by a 312-vote margin out of nearly 2.9 million ballots cast, a randomly selected citizen jury looked at all aspects of the recount and concluded: “The paper ballot recount by hand was very accurate and effective.” 

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine issued a landmark report in 2018 that called for recounts to be conducted by hand, saying “Recounts and audits should be conducted by human inspection of the human-readable portion of the paper ballots.”

Iowa election law has long allowed all candidates to request a hand recount option. Please contact the governor’s office to urge Reynolds to veto this unwise legislation and prevent a backslide in election security.

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Editor’s note from Laura Belin: The Iowa House approved the recount bill on a mostly party-line 66 to 31 vote, with Democrat Austin Baeth joining Republicans to vote yes. The Iowa Senate passed the bill by 31 votes to 14, strictly along party lines.

Top photo of the Minnesota recount is by immortalpoet, available via Wikimedia Commons.