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The Real Crisis of US Election Security
With the United States midterm elections coming soon, US election systems are already under attack, via false or misleading stories on social media (disinformation attacks). These systems are also vulnerable to more serious subversion attacks, where digital components are targeted and compromised to alter or manipulate the actual casting of ballots and tabulation of results. How did the US reach this crisis point, where this critical infrastructure is now so vulnerable? Is there any way to remedy this threat to the most fundamental building block of a healthy democracy, a secure and reliable voting system?
Register to Vote For U.S. Midterms 2018
To cast your ballot in the upcoming 2018 U.S. midterm election, you must be registered to vote. The TrustTheVote Project builds and maintains Rock The Vote’s online voter registration system. Register today, or learn more about your state’s registration requirements.
Will foes attack the U.S. midterm elections in 2018?
There are many reasons to be concerned that some adversaries of the United States will attempt, again, to sow chaos in the upcoming U.S. elections. What are the threats that US election systems face right now?
Voter registration problems in Maryland signal larger vulnerabilities for upcoming elections
This Monday, state officials in Maryland acknowledged that problems with their “motor voter” systems are more significant than originally described: [A]s many as 80,000 voters — nearly quadruple the original estimate — will have to file provisional ballots Tuesday because the state Motor Vehicle Administration failed to transmit updated voter information to the state Board …
The TrustTheVote Project supports EU privacy standards
To prepare for the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) for EU countries, the TrustTheVote Project web support team and OSET Institute Legal reviewed all of our data privacy and security policies to ensure that we meet (or exceed) the standards set by the GDPR. Data privacy and security is one of the foundational values …
Election Meddling Using Social Media Bots & its Brush with Election Technology
For those interested in how foreign adversaries are meddling in U.S. elections with social media, there is a recent must-read paper from the NDN Think Tank: A Primer on Social Media Bots And Their Malicious Use In U.S. Politics authored by Tim Chambers of the Dewey Square Group. This report is the definitive work about: …
Election Technology Enigmas Considered Harmful
I have one last comment of CAP’s recent report “9 Solutions to Secure America’s Elections” in addition to my previous comments and those of my colleagues here at the OSET Institute. I don’t agree that any 9 steps can “Secure America’s Elections” and especially not CAP’s 9 steps. Their recommendations are fundamentally about gradualism: the …
Election Infrastructure Recommendations: We Need to Respect Our Election Officials
My thanks to the Center for American Progress (“CAP”) for their recent report “9 Solutions to Secure America’s Elections”. As my colleagues here at OSET Institute have already written, we agree with many of the report’s recommendations at a short term tactical level, but in addition have a longer term strategic view based on principles of …
Elections + National Security = Hardware Threats + Policy Questions
U.S. election technology is increasingly regarded as critical to national interests. In discussions about the national-level importance of election technology, I’ve also increasingly heard the term “national security” used. The idea seems to be that election technology is as important as other national-security-critical systems. That’s fair enough in principle, but at present we are a …
Dismantling Federal Assistance to US Elections — The Freeze/Thaw Cycle
Last time I wrote in this series on the EAC being dismantled, I used the metaphor of freezing and thawing to describe not only how the EAC’s effectiveness has been limited, but also the consequence: We now have voting systems that have been vetted with standards and processes that are almost as Jurassic as the pre-Internet era. …