ABC57's Brian Conybeare factchecks President's voter fraud allegations with Indiana expert

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- ABC57's Brian Conybeare interviewed Ball State political science professor Chad Kinsella, to factcheck claims made by President Trump on Wednesday night about election tampering and voter roll security. 

BRIAN: Joining us now to discuss the president's speech and his claims that the election system is vulnerable nationwide is Ball State political science professor Chad Kinsella, who is also the executive director of the VSTOP program at Ball State that checks voting machines for vulnerabilities statewide. Good to see you, sir. How are you?

PROF. KINSELLA: Thank you for having me, and I'm great. Thank you.

BRIAN: Can you explain to our viewers what VSTOP is and what you and your team do all across Indiana with those election machines to make sure ballots are safe and secure? There is a system.

PROF. KINSELLA: There is a system. There are lots of different systems, actually. So, VSTOP (Voting System Technical Oversight Program) is a voting systems technical oversight program.

One of the key things that we do is we certify all of the election equipment that's used. That includes the things that you vote on, the voting systems. There are four different vendors that have that that that provide voting equipment, and we also certify.

Indiana was actually the first state to certify electronic poll books, or what we call EPBs, so that is all certified here. And again, there are three vendors in the state that that provide electronic poll books to the counties as well. So, all of that is certified here. And I guess one of the good things is, it's a two-step process.

There are two federal labs that are accredited, and they actually they get the first crack at these machines. They literally pull these machines apart down to their individual components and rebuild them. And they test all of the individual components. They send us a report.

Then we also check. We have a checklist that we go through to make sure that it does or does not do all the things that it's supposed to do, then we make a recommendation to the Indiana Election Commission, which is a bipartisan commission of two Republicans and two Democrats, who then have to give us the kind of the blessing and certify that equipment to be used in Indiana.

So, when you think about those election machines, all of the election machines, they go through a very rigorous process before they ever get to you, the voter, in the individual counties.

BRIAN: And my understanding is those actual voting machines are not connected to the internet here in Indiana, so it would be very difficult to hack them, would it not?

PROF. KINSELLA: It is impossible, and again, I want to make this very, very clear. And again, the EAC, the Election Assistance Commission, had put this out. There has never been an instance where an election system has ever been hacked.

And again, all the of the election systems, and especially election systems that we use in Indiana, they're what we call air gapped. You can't hack it. Again, it's it would be like you. I could show you, my wallet. Like maybe you could hack like some of the things in my wallet. But my wallet is a leather wallet. It can't connect to the internet, and it's the same thing with the voting machines.

They do not connect to the internet at all. They're air gapped. They're tested. There's penetration testing at those federal labs to make sure that nothing can connect to the internet. They do not connect to the internet. It's not possible to hack them because they don't connect. They are made to not connect to the internet.

BRIAN: What do you make of President Trump's claims of widespread vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure nationwide? The Chinese allegedly hacking some voter registration data, but do you see any evidence of that kind of thing yourself here in Indiana?

PROF. KINSELLA: The voter registration data is a whole different thing. There are some online components to that, so, it is kind of online. We call that the state voting registration system. Again, another acronym, SVRS, and so every state has a state voter registration system, and so some of those can be like at vulnerable. There's a lot of energy, time, and money put in to making sure that they are okay. I am not aware of any instance where Indiana has been hacked, but again, it's possible.

But again, here's the thing: it's these are not the voting systems, and those are not where you know the election results are stored or anything like that. That's where we have the registered voters.

And again, there's always a record of those. If you could hack it and put 30,000 people on there, we would know immediately, and we would know exactly who was put on there recently, because it's all time stamped.

There's an immense amount of security. Now I can speak specifically to Indiana and again, so VSTOP, we do not handle the SVRS. That's done at the Secretary of State's level. But again, they have a whole lot of security that is involved.

And then also we have training. If you're going to use electronic poll books, which connect to the SVRS, you have to go through we call it a RAPSA training, to make sure that you know how to correctly connect, and you know what to do, and so we've had a lot of success with that.

To my knowledge, you know, we have had no problems in Indiana with people hacking into the system. 

There are some- Russia, China, North Korea, probably Iran at this point, who would love to do those things, and they're going to continue to try. And there are points where they could be successful in that SVRS, which is online.

But we have a lot of systems in place. We know what happens, and we know how to fix it, and we know if anything has happened. So again, I would I want to make sure that you know it it is a very safe and secure system.

BRIAN: Bottom line: Do you think the midterm elections this fall will be safe and secure, in your professional opinion?

PROF. KINSELLA: I do, and again, so I can speak more towards Indiana. I would stake everything we have... There's VSTOP. There's the Indiana Election Division. There's the Indiana Election Commission. There are multiple different state agencies that are involved in elections that are all there to make sure that they are run fairly and securely.

And then at the county level, we have the same type of thing. Local people run those elections, and you have your county clerks that are also doing a good job and also want to want to make sure that they get things done correctly.

There are multiple levels. It's very bipartisan. There's a lot of security. There's a lot of time and energy put into making sure that elections are done correctly, safely, securely.

Do hiccups occur? Absolutely. There are there are lots of little accidents that happen, but that's the same with anything. There's no fail-safe system that I'm aware of.

But at this point in time, I would say we have a very, very good system. It is very safe and secure. There are a lot of organizations that are there to make sure that they are they are done correctly. And I would stake everything that my whole credibility that you know the midterms will be fine. 

BRIAN: Professor Chad Consella, a ballot security expert at Ball State University, thank you very much for sharing your time and your expertise with our viewers. We appreciate you.

PROF. KINSELLA: My pleasure. Thank you.