As Americans head to the polls, this Election dayconfidence that their vote will be counted accurately and that the democratic process is free from interference is vital, experts said.

But with early voting underway and just days before the remaining ballots for the 2024 presidential election are cast, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about voting machine security are looming over the race for the White House.

The 2020 election saw former President Donald Trump spark some distrust in the voting system, which was claimed by some fellow Republicans, supporters and media outlets.

Despite the debunking of voting machine conspiracy theories such as internet hacking and widespread physical tampering, misinformation about the democratic process is pervasive on social media and provides some of the recent lawsuits filed by RNC-aligned groups in key swing states.

Elon Musk — a major Trump supporter and owner of X — recently continued to fuel voting machine fraud, telling a crowd at a town hall in Pennsylvania: “The last thing I would do is trust a computer program because it’s too much. easy to crack,” Musk said.

However, multiple reviews of 2020 voter fraud claims and a landmark defamation lawsuit between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News found the fraud conspiracy theories and Trump’s claim that he won the election over President Joe Biden to be unfounded .

In April 2023, Dominion reached a nearly $800 million settlement with Fox for spreading false theories on conservative news outlets’ platforms.

In addition, state and federal courts have dismissed more than 60 lawsuits in six states by Trump and his allies seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“These claims lacked credibility,” Lauren Cristella, president of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based nonpartisan government watchdog, told ABC News.

“I’m confident that our elections are free, fair, safe and secure, and that the systems we have in place, the checks and balances we have in place, are working,” Cristella added.

So how do voting machines work? And what security measures are in place from the federal to the community level to ensure that every vote is counted and free from interference?

Before Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris battle it out for America’s vote on Nov. 5, experts said understanding the security measures that follow ballots from casting to counting can bring clarity and comfort to the process.

What voting machines are used in elections?

While election officials use technology to register voters, count and, in some cases, cast votes, the system focuses largely on paper ballots.

“In almost every place in the country, about 98 percent of voters, when they cast their ballot, there will be a paper record of their vote,” Derek Tisler, who serves as election and government counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice. program, he told ABC News.

Historically, there have been five types of voting machines used in the U.S.: hand-counted paper, mechanical lever machines, punch card machines, scanned paper ballots and electronic direct registration devices, according to the MIT Election Lab.

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In time for the 2024 election, optically scanned paper ballot systems are widely used to count physical votes, which can be likened to the technology used to score a standardized test, according to MIT.

Voters mark their ballot in a private voting booth and it is then scanned as it is deposited in the ballot box, with the votes counted at the end of the day.

Electronic direct registration systems use buttons or a touch screen to record votes, often with a paper ballot for audits or recounts.

And ballot marking devices and systems, which are entirely electronic, are primarily used to accommodate voters with disabilities.

There are 10 different manufacturers of voting systems that have been tested and approved by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), including Clear Ballot, Dominion’s Voting Systems, and Electoral Systems. & Software (ES&S), to name a few.

The road to approval includes stress tests on equipment and checks for software defects, ensuring that cars have the basic functionality, accessibility and security capabilities required for these systems, according to the EAC.

“So every voting system, including ours, goes through a certification process in accredited testing labs,” Chip Trowbridge, Clear Ballot’s chief technology officer, told ABC News.

“Every change, no matter how big or how small, whether it’s a source code or software change, needs to be reviewed,” Trowbridge said.

Individual states and local jurisdictions also have certification processes for voting machine manufacturers that vary by location, according to Trowbridge.

What security measures are taken to protect the voting machines?

One of the first lines of defense against tampering is the physical security of voting machines, according to Ted Allen, professor of integrated systems engineering at Ohio State University and a member of MIT’s Election Lab.

Until Election Day and after votes are cast, the machines are stored in secure locations with limited access to election officials, Allen told ABC News.

At polling places, voting machines are constantly under surveillance, with election officials and security personnel trained to ensure that unauthorized access is not possible, according to Allen.

“The paper, the chain of custody of the equipment and the chain of custody of the ballots are all generally very carefully studied and controlled,” Allen said.

In the 2020 election, however, several people were charged with tampering with voting machines.

Tina Peters, a Colorado Republican election official, was sentenced to nine years in prison for leading a security breach of the county’s election system after being inspired by false and baseless claims of voter fraud.

She was convicted of giving an individual access to the election software she used for her county. Screenshots of the software have appeared on right-wing sites.

In Georgia, bail bondsman Scott Hall has been charged with allegedly tampering with voting machine equipment following the 2020 election in Coffee County.

Hall and several of his co-defendants allegedly “entered into a conspiracy to willfully interfere” with the results of the 2020 election and “unlawfully” accessed voting machines to obtain data, including images of ballots. vote.

Hall pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiracy to commit willful interference with election duties. He will receive probation and has agreed to continue testifying, including at the trial of other co-defendants.

While no system is ever completely impervious to threats, voting machines are protected by a number of technical and procedural measures that make them extremely difficult to hack.

A spokesman for Electoral Systems & Software, Inc., told ABC News that outside of physical controls, the company’s voting equipment follows secure practices for creating, transferring and storing important election files and data.

Using encryption and digital signatures for data, Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)-compliant cryptographic modules, and creation of encrypted USB flash drives programmed for that choice all prevent tampering by unauthorized agents, according to ES.&S.

Do the voting machines connect to the internet?

A key safeguard to make voting machines difficult to hack is the lack of internet access during the voting process.

According to Trowbridge, the machines used to scan ballots in a polling station are incapable of having any Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio or network connections at all.

“Those systems can have absolutely no network,” Trowbridge said. “In fact, if you look at the machines at Clear Ballot, the only wire coming out of them is a power cord.”

According to Trowbridge, the central scanning equipment is networked, but the technology resides in an airspace network that is completely separate from the public Internet.

This significantly reduces the risk of remote hacking or unauthorized access from external sources, he said.

Even if a hacker tries to access a voting machine, they would have to physically tamper with the machine itself, which can be more difficult due to physical security measures.

Looking at November 5th, Derek Tisler pointed out that there are always checks and balances available in the process to ensure that there is no one person who could disrupt something.

“Public trust is so central to the democratic process, and that’s why elections are transparent,” Tisler said.