Election Day technical difficulties won't mean democracy is over

“I guarantee that something will happen on Election Day,” said David Becker, the executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “Election Day is the culmination of a process in which 150 million Americans are doing the same thing in a process run by about 1 million volunteers. There are going to be problems and mistakes.”…

“It’s pretty common for a certain percentage of machines to fail. It’s also true that when poll workers are unfamiliar with the systems, they sometimes have trouble getting them started in the morning,” Lindeman said, noting that the pandemic has made it difficult to do further pilot tests of new equipment. “We’re really excited about the move to paper but this has not been a terrific year for any kind of technological transition.”…

“I do think because we’re in this environment, ordinary problems that of course we’re going to see in every election get blown out of proportion,” said Lawrence Norden, director of the election reform program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “They’re easy to use for disinformation, [to suggest] that there’s some bigger problem with the system or that the system has been hacked. But these problems are just going to happen when you’ve got 10,000 separate election jurisdictions, all with different technology.”