From voter registration to tallying ballots to reporting results, technology—computers and software—plays a central role in almost every aspect of U.S. elections. Information technology has become essential for managing the U.S.'s complex elections, and, when all goes well, provides great benefits in efficiency, accuracy, and usability. But computers and software are also notoriously (and fundamentally) unreliable and vulnerable to tampering, and the systems we use for voting and election management are no exception. In some ways, the integrity of election outcomes has become dependent on the integrity of technology that may not always work as intended. Can we trust our elections? Should we?
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Fortunately, while the unreliability and vulnerability of election technology is a real problem, recent advances have found reliable methods for conducting high-integrity elections even with flawed (or malicious) technology. This talk will examine the technologies used in elections, the way they can fail, and practical safeguards that mitigate risks they introduce.
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This program will be presented in-person at the Linda Hall Library. If you would prefer to watch this program virtually, please follow this link to register:
Matt Blaze is the McDevitt Professor of Law and Computer Science at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on large-scale secure systems, surveillance, voting, and similar problems that lie at the intersection of technology and public policy. He has led voting systems security studies on behalf of two states, is a founder of the DEFCON Voting Village, and has been called upon numerous times by various government entities to offer analysis and advice on securing election systems.
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Dr. Blaze previously was a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a research scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He holds a PhD in computer science from Princeton University, an MS in computer science from Columbia University, and a BS from the City University of New York.
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