Here is an excerpt from the great article on this bizarre issue with voting machines by Ryan F. Mandelbaum on Gizmodo. One more problem with voting machines you probably hadn’t put your finger on before:

When all sources of errors have been ruled out and 4096 phony votes have still been given to a candidate, who do you blame? In some cases, these kinds of glitches may be coming from outer space, according to scientists who discussed this cosmic conundrum today at the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences in Boston. Just to be clear, this does NOT mean that aliens influenced the 2016 election.

Every day, the Earth falls victim to an onslaught of high-energy particles originating from throughout the galaxy and even our Sun. These particles, especially neutrons, can interact with the semiconductors powering computer chips and cause an assortment of glitches in all of our electronics. Such interactions have been an aviation issue for several decades, but in recent years, concern over cosmic rays harming cell phones, electronic cars and even voting machines has increased. Now, consumer electronic companies are attempting to manufacture their devices to be more hardy against every day cosmic rays, and bigger space weather events like solar storms.

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