News & Insights
We’re Making History in Real Time.
Our timely insights share informed perspectives on the rapidly evolving story of Election Technology, as it unfolds.
Modernizing Voter Roll List Management
List management is persistent grains of sand in the gears of election information management, specifically voter rolls administration. With the antiquity of Crosscheck due to software aging and neglect, and the sudden, and likely ill-advised partisan souring on ERIC when officials across the political spectrum laud its utility, it’s time to revisit the power of public technology to help, because innovation thrives, unbridled, in the absence of restrictive commercial mandates….
Kraken Busting and the "Most Secure Election Ever"
The November 2020 election has been called “the most secure ever,” for several good reasons, despite the fact that there is still a lot of worrisome room for improvement. Now it appears we may need to crack down on some more Kraken-wannabes before they become such.
House Hearing on Election Security Broaches Supply Chain Issues
The Committee on House Administration, the committee with oversight responsibility for matters relating to federal elections, is holding a hearing today entitled “2020 Election Security: Perspectives from Voting System Vendors and Experts.” The CEOs of the three voting machine makers (Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, Dominion Voting Systems) are providing written testimonies, two of which include statements about supply chain risk. Supply chain risk management is a timely topic.
The Case for Mobile App Voting: Can We Know the Risks to the Whole Election?
In a recent InformationWeek Dark Reading article, Kelly Jackson Higgins asks whether Internet voting by mobile app is better than other forms of Internet voting, based on better security. Rewinding to the beginning of this series: my response is, “No, App based mobile voting isn’t preferable to other forms based on security.” However, it might be preferable to other methods based on voter convenience, but there are many other factors...
The Race to Secure Our Elections: Are We Ready for November?
In my last article I highlighted the most important advancements in election security. This post examines the next logical steps: Is all this progress enough, and will our upcoming elections be more resistant to disruption than they were in 2016? The answer is: "Yes, but not as much as we had hoped…"
The Race to Secure our Elections: How Far Have we Come?
This article is the 1st of a two-part series on the state of America’s election infrastructure security with less than 4-months left to 2018 midterm election. Here I discuss the current situation and progress, and in the next post I will evaluate preparedness for the upcoming midterm in 110 days…
Recounting Cyberscoop's SF CyberTalks Election Security Panel
Our CTO John Sebes was a featured speaker at Cyberscoop’s recent San Francisco CyberTalks held last week in downtown San Francisco. A huge success, SF CyberTalks was a TED-like conference for the cyber-security leadership community that brought together top influential leaders from the cyber-security community, technology industry and the government. We recap the Election Security Panel discussion John participated on, including recaps of his comments and answers to the moderator’s questions.
Recapping Our 4 CAP Briefing Posts
You may wonder why we spent 4 blog posts reviewing and discussing the CAP Briefing. Here’s briefly why. This Briefing is the kind of substantive consideration and conversation America (e.g., election officials, U.S. security officials, policy strategists, policy makers, and other stakeholders) needs to be having right now. Any set of recommendations deserves fair, intellectually honest, and open consideration and debate...
Another Look at the CAP Briefing on Solving Election Security
We want to give credit to the great points the Center for American Progress recently made in their Briefing about election integrity. While we have some strategic differences, we generally endorse CAP’s tactical steps for improving election integrity in the near term. The CAP Briefing was well researched and brought together many points that are widely agreed upon by the election integrity community including the OSET Institute. Given Greg’s desire to limit the length of his response recently, and focus on the structural issue we’re so concerned about, we decided I would post a list here of the points we agree with and those we differ on...