Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @12:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the primary-software dept.

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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07 2019, @06:51PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07 2019, @06:51PM (#840342)

    > Entrenched political influence is the real threat.

    Lawrence Lessig outlines the severity of just that problem [youtube.com], but stops short of pointing to any full solutions. His move against the current methods of campaign financing back in 2016 came close. His new tack is to try to get the candidates to mention it before the primaries. Again, while he does not have a solution he does describe why it is overdue to address the problem.

  • (Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:17PM (1 child)

    by sshelton76 (7978) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:17PM (#840368)

    Well my solution is to never vote incumbent. But with only 2 political parties and not a whole lot of real difference between them, it does feel like throwing my vote away. This is one reason I keep working every election cycle as a supervisor. I can put down at least some of the shenanigans. Since I don't care about any party nor any candidate, I at least get to feel impartial.

    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday May 07 2019, @10:35PM

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @10:35PM (#840481) Journal

      But with only 2 political parties

      Really? Only two candidates for each office?

      In which city/state is that, if I may ask?

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..