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.
Election Vulnerabilities: No Exploit Too Small; No Impact Too Large
The American public is currently in the midst of a rude awakening as increasing numbers of reports diagnose the state of American cybersecurity, especially as it pertains to elections. The nature of attacks isn’t limited to election administration equipment. Lots of havoc can be wreaked just attacking voter services web site…
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.
Senate Intelligence Committee Announces Election Security Recommendations
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) offered up its first set of draft recommendations today (Tuesday) from its on-going investigation of foreign intervention in American sovereignty—specifically our election processes including both campaigns and electioneering, and the actual process of election administration. They were announced earlier today with a press conference held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Those draft SSCI recommendations are as follows in this article with some commentary of our own...
Venerable Technology Visionary John Gage Joins OSET Institute Board
The OSET Institute announces today that veteran technologist John Gage has joined its Board of Directors. How kewl is this? I mean the venerable Gage is like the “Yoda of Silicon Valley,” right? After all, he coined the phrase, “The network is the computer.” But this news is particularly important in light of our mission and John's experience...
Critical Democracy Infrastructure: Our Briefing Launches
We are pleased to announce the release of the OSET Institute’s Critical Democracy Infrastructure (CDI) Briefing. It’s been over a year in development. Early review by several in Government, Media, and Advisors tell us this may be the most important publication on the issue of election infrastructure yet. We humbly hope so. This Briefing provides a thorough review of the technology infrastructure of election administration and operation. We address its critical nature and what is required for it to be treated as such, and assess the challenges of official designation, as well as the immediate and longer-term challenges to protecting this vital aspect of our democracy...
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...
Another Proposed Solution Set to Protect U.S. Elections
Danielle Root and Liz Kennedy at the Center for American Progress (“CAP”) published an important Briefing today highlighting nine solutions to secure America’s elections. The Briefing is well researched and offers a keen assessment of our current public elections’ average level of integrity. I want to say right up front, this is good and important work. What we offer as a review and comment here is intended to catalyze an intellectually honest conversation, and not to serve as some critique of their good work.
One Last iVoting Consideration: Blockchain
One last item for this series on iVoting that I’m adding by popular inquiry is this new bright shiny object called “Blockchain.” If you’re involved in election technology or computer science in general you’ve probably heard of Blockchain.....
Can iVoting Change the Electorate?
We produced this series of posts on Internet Voting or “iVoting” and its challenges because there is increasing interest in understanding how to innovate our election infrastructure. We concede it can be a potential and prospective advance in voting technology—a next frontier of elections for the 21st century if you will. And some even speculate this new way of exercising our civic duty and civil right could expand participation....
What Would a Realistic iVoting System Look Like?
When we last left the discussion in Part 3, we looked at the 5 big technical challenges to an adoptable, credible, and defensible iVoting system. For Part 4 we begin to consider what a new iVoting System solution could or would have to look like...
The Technical Challenges Facing iVoting
iVoting faces several technological challenges before it can begin to be implemented. Most election officials and experts in the field are hesitant or skeptical about implementing iVoting with current Internet and Web technology. Even when we view iVoting as simply returning a digital absentee ballot or the digital equivalent of voting by mail, as I explain in this installment of my series, there are still substantial innovations required....
The Challenges of iVoting Implementation
When we last left this discussion, I had laid out a basis for our interest in technologies just over the horizon or "ready next" and in particular the growing interest in smartphone voting. I am essentially carving up a technology backgrounder white paper for easy reading here. Today I help us dive in with a survey of the challenge areas to "Pajama Voting" (I love that phrase)...
Is Foreign State Hacking of an Election An Act of War?
A couple of days ago Benjamin Dynkin, Barry Dynkin & Daniel Garrie, published an intriguing article in the New York Law Journal, “Hacking Elections: An Act of War?” (Subscription required.) The article is well heeled; Benjamin Dynkin is a law clerk at Grauman Law Group. Barry Dynkin is of counsel at the firm, where he heads the cyber security practice. Daniel Garrie is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law and Cyber Warfare and a partner at Zeichner Ellman & Krause. And its worth summarizing here food for thought (inasmuch as possibly some intellectual navel-gazing ;-)
iVoting and the Challenges of Election Reform
This is the first of a multi-part series on the topic of iVoting -- its many challenges to becoming a reality. This blog post introduces author Sergio Valente, a student at American University and an Electoral Infrastructure Policy Researcher & Analyst at the OSET Institute.
Oh, Canada: Major Election Technology Research Collaboration with Elections Ontario
San-Francisco, CA — GET Summit We're announcing today, Day-2 of the Global Election Technology Summit underway in San Francisco, a unique collaboration with a Canadian partner, Elections Ontario....
Addressing the Impact of Voter Data Tampering
We are often asked to explain the impact of compromised voter data and we realized today that given some very relevant integrity engineering going on in the TrustTheVote Project its worth revisiting that for new citizens following our work, especially the growing #unhackthevote community.....
National Academies Wades Into The Future of Voting Technology Question
The esteemed National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine recently announced the formation of the “Committee on the Future of Voting: Accessible, Reliable, Verifiable Technology.” Their Study will take up topics in four areas all of which we have developed domain expertise in for 10-years. We're excited to support their efforts...
A Call for the President to Act on Electoral Integrity Preparedness
Its not common for us to wade into policy issues of our U.S. President's Administration, but given how much we've witnessed regarding foreign meddling in the 2016 election cycle, we believe its well within our mission scope to comment today on this nation's preparedness regarding our election infrastructure in upcoming elections.....
Wharton-OSET Election Technology Industry Study Released
The OSET Institute and Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative released a new study today, over a year in development, that provides a business analysis of the structure and outlook of the voting machine industry. Wharton made a 2-minute video overview to provide a very high-level overview . . .