voting
AI and Voter Engagement
Social media has been a familiar, even mundane, part of life for nearly two decades. It can be easy to forget it was not always that way. In 2008, social media was ...
How Cybersecurity Fears Affect Confidence in Voting Systems
American democracy runs on trust, and that trust is cracking. Nearly half of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, question whether elections are conducted fairly. Some voters accept election results only when their ...
The Voter Experience
Technology and innovation have transformed every part of society, including our electoral experiences. Campaigns are spending and doing more than at any other time in history. Ever-growing war chests fuel billions of ...
Security Analysis of the MERGE Voting Protocol
Interesting analysis: An Internet Voting System Fatally Flawed in Creative New Ways. Abstract: The recently published “MERGE” protocol is designed to be used in the prototype CAC-vote system. The voting kiosk and ...
On Secure Voting Systems
Andrew Appel shepherded a public comment—signed by twenty election cybersecurity experts, including myself—on best practices for ballot marking devices and vote tabulation. It was written for the Pennsylvania legislature, but it’s general ...
Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy
Last month, I convened the Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy (IWORD 2023) at the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center. As with IWORD 2022, the goal was to bring together a diverse ...
AI and Lossy Bottlenecks
Artificial intelligence is poised to upend much of society, removing human limitations inherent in many systems. One such limitation is information and logistical bottlenecks in decision-making. Traditionally, people have been forced to ...
Security Analysis of a Thirteenth-Century Venetian Election Protocol
Interesting analysis: This paper discusses the protocol used for electing the Doge of Venice between 1268 and the end of the Republic in 1797. We will show that it has some useful ...
AI and US Election Rules
If an AI breaks the rules for you, does that count as breaking the rules? This is the essential question being taken up by the Federal Election Commission this month, and public ...
Security Vulnerability of Switzerland’s E-Voting System
Online voting is insecure, period. This doesn’t stop organizations and governments from using it. (And for low-stakes elections, it’s probably fine.) Switzerland—not low stakes—uses online voting for national elections. Andrew Appel explains ...
