The secret ballot has been an article of faith in US elections. That’s being tested in Georgia

A long-known vulnerability in Georgia’s voting system is drawing renewed concern as advances in artificial intelligence make it easier to potentially connect individual voters with their supposedly secret ballots.

Georgia voters use touchscreen machines that print paper ballots, which are then scanned. Researchers discovered in 2022 that a software flaw can allow electronic ballot images and cast-vote records—normally randomized—to be reconstructed in the order they were cast. When combined with other publicly available election records, that information could potentially identify how individual voters voted. The vulnerability does not allow anyone to change votes or undermine the accuracy of election results; the concern is specifically ballot secrecy.

The issue has become more urgent because AI tools can now perform technical work that previously required substantial expertise. Princeton researcher Max Springer said he used a publicly available AI assistant to reverse the shuffled order of Georgia primary election records and, after providing additional public records such as early-voting lists and scanner audit logs, was able in many cases to match specific voters with their ballots.

Election-security experts warn that ballot secrecy protects voters from coercion, vote buying and political intimidation. Georgia’s Constitution specifically requires elections to be conducted by secret ballot, while state law requires voting equipment to preserve “absolute secrecy.”

Georgia election officials acknowledge the vulnerability but argue that safeguards and criminal penalties reduce the practical risk. A proposal before the State Election Board to require installation of a manufacturer-recommended software update was rejected. Officials said the update had not yet been certified, could take months to implement and had not been funded by the legislature.

For now, the secretary of state’s office plans to restrict or redact certain public election records and is working with a vendor to scramble the original order of ballot images and cast-vote records before releasing them. Critics argue that limiting public access is the wrong solution and that Georgia should instead change the system so ballots cannot be traced to voters at all. One proposed temporary solution would collect ballots in locked boxes at precincts and later shuffle and scan them at centralized locations.

The dispute is especially significant because Georgia uses the voting system statewide and remains a major electoral battleground. Security advocates say the combination of Georgia’s equipment, public-records laws and increasingly powerful AI tools creates an unusually serious threat to the traditional guarantee of a secret ballot.

Writer: Kate Brumback, Associated Press