National: Election security threats loom as presidential campaigns begin | TechTarget
Never has it been more important to have a mechanism to audit U.S. voting results, but experts say election security risks combined with the weaponization of social media make the task more difficult than ever. The electronic voting systems used in a number of states are a concern for security experts who have seen serious flaws in these systems. If the 2020 U.S. election results are disputed by a candidate, there must be a clear way to show voting results are accurate to ensure a peaceful transition of government, said Avi Rubin a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, during an RSA Conference 2019 session on election hacking. … Ronald Rivest, a professor in MIT’s Cryptography and Information Security research group, said during a separate session at RSA Conference that “keeping it simple with low-tech paper ballots” is the lesson learned over the past decade. We still need to know that the tabulation of those ballots is accurate, via audits, and states like Colorado and Rhode Island are piloting new risk-limiting audit systems, Rivest said.