Year: 2026
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Organizing and Automating Poll Tape Auditing
(Part 3 of a 3-part series) In previous articles in this series, I’ve explained that any member of the public can witness the poll tapes printed by voting machines when the polls close—in at least 30 states. Other states have more restrictive rules. To make this practice effective, we need these three things: The good…
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Compare the Poll Tapes Against the Precinct-by-Precinct Election Results
(part 2 of a 3-part series) In most states, the county election administrator publishes election results with vote totals for each candidate broken down by precinct. Here’s an example from Mercer County, New Jersey, from the 2024 General Election (click on Detail XLS, Detail XML, or Detail TXT to get the spreadsheet in one format…
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Publish the Poll Tapes
(Part 1 of a 3-part series) If we are worried that hacked (or unintentionally misconfigured) voting systems might incorrectly count the ballots, there are three parts to the voting system that we should worry about: If the voting machines are hacked, or misconfigured, then the results they write onto the thumbdrives and the poll tapes…
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AI Election Policy
Authors: Tanvi Prem, Mihir Kshirsagar (Princeton University) Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. As we enter the midterm election cycle, there is growing evidence that Americans are turning to AI chatbots for election-related information. A 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that 42% of US adults now use AI chatbots to search for information, and a 2024…
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Does the Current AI Buildout Depend on an Automation Agenda?
Authors: Mihir Kshirsagar (Princeton University) Data centers in Ashburn, VA. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Arvind Narayanan kicked off CITP’s seminar series for the academic year by arguing that we should invest in augmentation rather than automation for AI development. I find that call inspiring. But with the enormous amounts of money that are flowing into…
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Making Community Governance Legible: A Semester with Bonfire
By Sohyeon Hwang Authors: Sohyeon Hwang (Princeton University), Andrés Monroy-Hernández (Princeton University) Most of us have spent the last two decades living inside platforms we have little control over. A handful of companies tune algorithms, moderate content, and set policies. Operating at “unfathomable” scales, this comes at a cost: it constrains diverse communities to a…
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After Math
By Eamon Duede Authors: Silvia De Toffoli (University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia), Eamon Duede (Princeton University and Purdue University) Note: This post was originally shared on Terry Tao’s blog, linked here for further reading. On September 8th, 2026, OpenAI announced that it had produced an AI-generated solution to the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness…
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CITP Welcomes 2026-27 Fellows
The Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) welcomes our incoming Visiting Faculty, Postdoctoral Associates, and Emerging Scholars for the 2026-27 academic year! Graduate student bios will be shared on the blog shortly. 2026 CITP Visiting Faculty Eamon Duede Eamon Duede is assistant professor of philosophy at Purdue University with a joint appointment in the Data…
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Newsroom Guide for Authentication and Verification in the AI Age
By Felix Chen At our June workshop, organized jointly by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) and NYU Journalism, participants shared a desire for a practical, short-form resource to help newsrooms understand the current landscape of authentication and verification tools for addressing AI-generated content. To complement our full report, we have translated the workshop…
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An Algorithmic Failure Beneath the Secret Ballot
Authored by Max Springer The secret ballot is one of the load-bearing walls of democracy. In Georgia, as in most states, this allows you to know whether your neighbor voted, but never who they voted for. This simple guarantee allows for transparent elections while deterring voter intimidation. Yet, in multiple states including Georgia, that guarantee…