Obrigkeit would be the authorities
hörig would be submissive to, enslaved or dependent upon.
Hörig is used, say, if someone gets involved in a romantic relationship and allows themselves to be controlled by the new partner. It's a manic type of thing.
Maybe a, "slave to the authorities", would work.
I think that there are just a few companies that print ballots. Some are small, family owned businesses. Their printers have a specific microdot pattern that may be able to be tested against.
I also think the machine ballots are stored as a pdf file. They can be downloaded off the machine, printed on an inkjet, and the machine will still scan them.
If so, that could be checked for microdot patterns.