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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for ErnestTBass

From checking in at a polling place on a tablet to registering to vote by smartphone to using an electronic voting machine to cast a ballot, computers have become an increasingly common part of voting in America.

But the underlying technology behind some of those processes is often a black box. Private companies, not state or local governments, develop and maintain most of the software and hardware that keep democracy chugging along. That has kept journalists, academics and even lawmakers from speaking with certainty about election security.

In an effort to improve confidence in elections, Microsoft announced Monday that it is releasing an open-source software development kit called ElectionGuard that will use encryption techniques to let voters know when their vote is counted. It will also allow election officials and third parties to verify election results to make sure there was no interference with the results.

"It's very much like the cybersecurity version of a tamper-proof bottle," said Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice president of customer security and trust, in an interview with NPR. "Tamper-proof bottles don't prevent any hack of the contents of the bottle, but it makes it makes it harder, and it definitely reveals when the tampering has occurred."

Developed with the computer science company Galois, the kit will be available free of charge for election technology vendors to incorporate into their voting systems.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/06/720071488/ahead-of-2020-microsoft-unveils-tool-to-allow-voters-to-track-their-ballots

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