Category: Artificial Intelligence, Data Science & Society

In the November 2020 election in Williamson County, Texas, flawed e-pollbook software resulted in voters inadvertently voting for candidates and questions not from their own districts but from others in the same county.  These voters were deprived of the opportunity to vote for candidates they were entitled to vote for—and their votes were wrongly counted…

Hand-marked optical-scan paper ballots are the most secure form of voting: with any other method, if the computerized voting machines are hacked, there’s no trustworthy paper trail from which we can determine the true outcome of the election, based on the choices that voters actually indicated.  Even those voting methods that appear to have a…

Part 5 of a 5-part series starting here Switzerland commissioned independent expert reviews of the E-voting system built by Swiss Post.   One of those experts concluded, “as imperfect as the current system might be when judged against a nonexistent ideal, the current system generally appears to achieve its stated goals, under the corresponding assumptions…

(Part 4 of a 5-part series starting here) In 2021 the Swiss government commissioned several in-depth technical studies of the Swiss Post E-voting system, by independent experts from academia and private consulting firms.  They sought to assess, does the protocol as documented guarantee the security called for by Swiss law (the “ordinance on electronic voting”,…

(Part 3 of a 5-part series starting here) In Part 1, I described how Switzerland decided to assess the security and accuracy of its e-voting system.  Swiss Post is the “vendor” developing the system, the Swiss cantons are the “customer” deploying it in their elections, and the Swiss Parliament and Federal Chancellery are the “regulators,” …

by Vanessa Teague, an Australian computer scientist, cryptographer, and security/privacy expert. (Part 2 of a 5-part series starting here) Australian elections are known for the secret ballot and a long history of being peaceful, transparent and well run. So it may surprise you to learn that the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) is…

Part 1 of a 5-part series If I can shop and bank online, why can’t I vote online?   David Jefferson explained in 2011 why internet voting is so difficult to make secure,  I summarized again in 2021 why internet voting is still inherently insecure, and many other experts have explained it too.  Still, several…