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.
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…
Shifting the Conversation from “Shoring-up” to “Re-engineering”
This afternoon a bipartisan group of authorities on election administration and cybersecurity presented a Congressional Briefing on current election security challenges facing federal and state policymakers. While it was a worthy discussion, I keep having this sinking feeling that we’re simply re-arranging furniture on the deck of a large cruise ship steaming toward an icebreaker in the dark…
Recapping the Copenhagen Democracy Summit
The Copenhagen Democracy Summit was held a little over a week ago on June 22, launching a global alliance for democracy, while that very form of government is under siege in many nations. This is the first of several reflections, recaps, and reporting on this inaugural event. Our Director of International Development Joy London, and our Chief Operating Officer, Gregory Miller we’re both fortunate to have received invitations to attend and participate in an invitational group of 250 attendees. Mr. Miller was unable to attend due to logistical conflict, however, Ms. London did in fact attend, and this article utilizes portions of her reporting back….
Maryland Voter Registration Glitch: A Teachable Snafu
Maryland State officials reported a computer glitch prevented the Board of Elections from updating voter registration data for as many as 80,000 voters. As a result, thousands of people may have had to cast provisional ballots if they wanted to vote in Maryland’s primary. Though accidental in nature, this is a good example of how adversaries can disrupt and discredit elections…
OSET Institute to Attend Copenhagen Democracy Summit
We have some big news to share today: Members of our leadership team at the Institute have been personally invited to attend the inaugural Global Democracy Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark this week focused on improving the integrity and security of elections…
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 ;-)