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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.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07 2019, @05:01PM (5 children)
You are advertising your invention that differs from others solutions
It doesn't differ from any of the others, it is a electronic contraption that nobody needs. The only people that want this crap are the people who are selling it! You're trying to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos.
(Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @05:14PM (4 children)
You have a very strange definition of advertising. Normally the intent of advertising is to inform the public of an item for sale.
To my mind this is more like an RFC...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments [wikipedia.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07 2019, @05:50PM (3 children)
Yes, you are trying to sell black box voting. We don't want black box voting. It simply can never be trusted unless the entire thing can be plainly understood by anybody that graduated grade school. We must get a "receipt". Paper is still the best, most secure, verifiable by humans without assistance or obfuscation. It's cheap and easy, why the resistance?
You might have a nice instant messenger or email server/client though if the encryption is that good.
(Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @06:05PM (2 children)
Ok never mind, sorry I thought you read the description I posted. Read the post all the way through. Let go of any pre-conceived assumptions about what it contains and come at it from the perspective that my intention isn't to sell you on an idea, but simply to present a way it can be done. I don't spell it out, but yes you get a receipt. Two of them actually, a unique ticket from the polling check in process required to initiate the voting process and a receipt with a transaction number when you're done. But it's not a blackbox and it is fully verifiable. Just read it first and then try to pick it apart please.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday May 07 2019, @06:09PM (1 child)
DFTT, man. ;)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @06:15PM
He seemed sincere, didn't seem to be a troll. But thanks for the heads up, I'll be more cautious in the future.