It's Time to Start Thinking About Election Security in 2020

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.lawfareblog.com/its-time-start-thinking-about-election-security-2020

By Matt Tait
Lawfareblog.com
November 13, 2018

Those hoping for some peace and quiet after the conclusion of the 
contentious 2018 midterm elections have been sorely disappointed. As 
absentee ballots continued to trickle in across Georgia and Arizona, and 
as Florida braces for a recount of both its senatorial and gubernatorial 
races, several politicians -- including most notably President Trump, 
Florida’s current governor and Republican Senate nominee Rick Scott, Sen. 
Marco Rubio, and others -- were busy alleging voter fraud and casting 
doubt on the integrity of the vote count itself.

Although there is currently no evidence to support any claim of voter 
fraud at a scale that could plausibly affect any given race’s outcome, 
such claims reveal an important and usually overlooked aspect of the 
challenge of ensuring election security -- one that the United States will 
need to address before its next presidential election, in 2020.

Election security is somewhat of a strange subject because elections 
perform a more nuanced and complicated role than at first it might appear. 
The primary job of an election sounds simple enough: The goal is to poll 
eligible voters, count votes and accurately produce the name of a winner 
upon whom everyone can agree to confer power. But this is only half of the 
process. For elections to work, it is not sufficient that they produce an 
accurate tally of the votes cast. They must also convince the public that 
the tally is accurate.

In other words, it is not enough that elections are fair; they must also 
be seen to be fair.

[...]

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