United States, Boca Raton – June 26, 2019 – A new white paper released by the Center for Advanced Communications Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), with support from Smartmatic Corporation, calls for the development of an objective and public voting security model that employs an independent third-party assessment approach to evaluate the security of voting systems.
In Revisioning the U.S. Elections Process: Voting Security and Election Technology, Georgia Tech researchers assert that an innovative approach to voting system security assessment can not only help enhance national standards for voting system design, assessment and management, but also reduce cybersecurity threats and ensure election integrity, as well.
“To be truly effective, efforts to secure our elections must go beyond upgrading or replacing equipment and look at the voting process as a whole,” said lead author Paul Baker. “Beyond ensuring technological security, strong national standards for a systems-based, multifactor approach can also help restore confidence in elections by considering other factors in the electoral process like privacy, accessibility and transparency in conjunction with cybersecurity.”
Following the 2016 elections, confidence in the security of election systems in the U.S. is at an all-time low, while concerns about foreign interference are on the rise. This environment has led to confusion and uncertainty around upgrading voting systems and the adoption of advanced technologies for election security.
“Georgia Tech proposes a comprehensive model for voting security standards to address concerns about the overall integrity of the U.S. electoral system,” said Kevin Shelly, President of Smartmatic USA. “Smartmatic believes that adopting this framework for secure, accessible and transparent voting technology is an important step toward safeguarding elections at every stage.”
