Voting is an essential feature of democracy, but electoral fraud unfortunately is as old as voting itself. Increasingly, however, the way we count our votes completely depends on the computer system. Those systems have to work correctly and securely or the outcome of the election could be in jeopardy. Many jurisdictions don’t have in place proper safeguards, which create new opportunities for fraud.
The goal of the report is to provide sound understanding of how computer security is critical to the election process in broadly applicable sense and what we need to do to keep the election secure.
Safe, Clean and Unbiased Elections with Encrypted QR Code Voter Cardsijcisjournal
The aim of this paper is to propose a novel approach to conducting safe, clean and unbiased elections by
issuing Voter Cards with encrypted QR codes and including a new device called Voter Card Processor
(VCAP) for verifying the issued voter cards at polling stations during elections. Detailed descriptions are
provided of how to generate encrypted QR code voter cards, and how the VCAP functions in detecting
fraudulent voter cards and repeat voters. This approach enables polling officers to automatically verify
forgery of voter cards, identify and stop repeat voters, and also prevent rigging and compromised voting
that could be possible due to corruption, bribery, intimidation and muscle power.
Legal Issues in Mobile Security Researchmarciahofmann
I gave this talk at CanSecWest in 2012. Abstract:
This presentation will identify and discuss sticky legal problems raised by researching the security of mobile devices. Using American law as a jumping-off point, I'll discuss common legal issues that arise in mobile security research such as jailbreaking, reverse engineering, and interception of communications. We'll also talk about practical ways to reduce the risks of your research so that you can go about your work with less potential for legal trouble.
Voting is an essential feature of democracy, but electoral fraud unfortunately is as old as voting itself. Increasingly, however, the way we count our votes completely depends on the computer system. Those systems have to work correctly and securely or the outcome of the election could be in jeopardy. Many jurisdictions don’t have in place proper safeguards, which create new opportunities for fraud.
The goal of the report is to provide sound understanding of how computer security is critical to the election process in broadly applicable sense and what we need to do to keep the election secure.
Safe, Clean and Unbiased Elections with Encrypted QR Code Voter Cardsijcisjournal
The aim of this paper is to propose a novel approach to conducting safe, clean and unbiased elections by
issuing Voter Cards with encrypted QR codes and including a new device called Voter Card Processor
(VCAP) for verifying the issued voter cards at polling stations during elections. Detailed descriptions are
provided of how to generate encrypted QR code voter cards, and how the VCAP functions in detecting
fraudulent voter cards and repeat voters. This approach enables polling officers to automatically verify
forgery of voter cards, identify and stop repeat voters, and also prevent rigging and compromised voting
that could be possible due to corruption, bribery, intimidation and muscle power.
Legal Issues in Mobile Security Researchmarciahofmann
I gave this talk at CanSecWest in 2012. Abstract:
This presentation will identify and discuss sticky legal problems raised by researching the security of mobile devices. Using American law as a jumping-off point, I'll discuss common legal issues that arise in mobile security research such as jailbreaking, reverse engineering, and interception of communications. We'll also talk about practical ways to reduce the risks of your research so that you can go about your work with less potential for legal trouble.
Voting is an essential feature of democracy, but electoral fraud unfortunately is as old as voting itself. Increasingly, however, the way we count our votes completely depends on the computer system. Those systems have to work correctly and securely or the outcome of the election could be in jeopardy. Many jurisdictions don’t have in place proper safeguards, which create new opportunities for fraud.
The goal of the coursework is to provide sound understanding of how computer security is critical to the election process in broadly applicable sense and what we need to do to keep the election secure.
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of CongressCR.docxdonnajames55
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Order Code RL33190
The Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machine
(DRE) Controversy: FAQs and Misperceptions
December 14, 2005
Eric A. Fischer
Senior Specialist in Science and Technology
Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Kevin J. Coleman
Analyst in American National Government
Government and Finance Division
The Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machine (DRE)
Controversy: FAQs and Misperceptions
Summary
Most voting systems used in U.S. elections rely on computers in some way. The
most computerized is the direct recording electronic voting machine, or DRE. In this
system, votes are recorded directly onto computer memory devices. While DREs
have been in use since the early 1990s, questions about their security and reliability
were previously a relatively minor issue, even following the November 2000
presidential election and the subsequent congressional deliberations leading to the
enactment of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA, P.L. 107-252).
However, at least two factors led to a sharp increase in public concerns about
DREs beginning in 2003. First, the voting accessibility provisions in HAVA
promote the use of DREs, which have been the only kind of voting system that can
meet the HAVA requirements to permit persons with disabilities, including
blindness, to vote privately and independently. Second, potential security
vulnerabilities with DREs were publicized as a result of several studies. Several bills
have been introduced in the 109th Congress that would address these issues in
different ways.
In the public debate about DREs, there has been some confusion about what the
problems and issues are, arising to a significant degree from the complexity of DREs
and of elections in general. This confusion can lead to misperceptions about facts as
well as issues and options for resolving them. Points worth noting include the
following:
DREs do have unique security concerns and have not been thoroughly tested in
the scientific community. However, most election problems in 2004 were not
associated with DREs. Security flaws in them are not known to have compromised
any elections, and it is not clear how much of a threat those vulnerabilities pose to
election integrity in practice, especially in comparison to other kinds of threats. The
different models of DREs in current use vary substantially in design, and problems
that one model exhibits may not occur in others. Many of those problems are
procedural, not weaknesses in the technology itself.
It is not clear whether the unique security problems posed by DREs are best
addressed by requiring that they produce paper ballots or by other means. While
paper has useful security properties and is well-known, other methods exist that
might be superior. Furthermore, paper ballots used with DREs (called voter-verified
paper audit trails, or VVPAT) are largel.
A MULTIPLE BALLOTS ELECTION SCHEME USING ANONYMOUS DISTRIBUTIONIJNSA Journal
Electronic voting is an important application for security protocols. Most existing voting schemes are designed for elections in which each voter has only one ballot. However, some elections permit voters to cast multiple ballots. In this paper, we present a new voting scheme in which each voter can have multiple ballots, and can vote for multiple candidates. The proposed scheme allows the voter to simply pick their candidates and post a single encrypted message. Anonymous distribution of secret information is used so that no one knows which information is being passed to whom.
is work's main purpose is to provide a secure voting system that fits all of the voting process' requirements, including authentication, confidentiality, and morality. Simplicity is also required to guarantee that ordinary people participate. Other factors to consider are dependability, convenience, flexibility, mobility, and affordability, in addition to security and simplicity. We wanted to build a system where the whole encryption and decryption of the ballots is transparent and nevertheless safe to ensure that the user utilizes a secure voting system.
This lecture deals with the Humanistic Communication approach in e-Democracy. It has to delve into the structure of communication tools serving the purpose of better decision making for the citizen.
George Cambourakis, Board Member, European Communication Institute, GR
UNCOERCIBILITY IN E-VOTING AND EAUCTIONING MECHANISMS USING DENIABLE ENCRYPTIONIJNSA Journal
The uncoercibility to prevent rigging in e-voting and e-auction have been studied in different literatures. It is realized that the notion of a virtual booth and untappable channel are required to prevent coerciveness. Virtual booth protects the candidates to cast their private values without being observed by the adversary/coercer. However the adversary can influence the candidates after their casting. Adversary used to acquire the encrypted votes/bids either from the colluded authorities (voting server, auctioneer) or by eavesdropping the communicating channel and coerces the candidates to disclose their private values with the private keys and verifies whether the ciphers are the encryption of the private values. In the prior literatures of e-voting and e-auctioning, threshold-encryption and receipt-free mechanism are used to prevent the coercion and collusion respectively. But they assumed untappable channel to restrict eavesdropping. However, practically untappable channel is difficult to achieve. It should be a dedicated trusted link or continuous fiber link to implement untappable channel.
This is the June 2022 issue of the Journal of Physical Security. In addition to the usual editor’s rants and news about security, this issue has papers about ZigBee vulnerabilities, practical password cracking, humor & security, the costs of police body camera video storage, tips for reducing security guard turnover, and FDA & DHS blessing of security technologies.
Back issues of the Journal can be found at http://jps.rbseurity.com
Voting is an essential feature of democracy, but electoral fraud unfortunately is as old as voting itself. Increasingly, however, the way we count our votes completely depends on the computer system. Those systems have to work correctly and securely or the outcome of the election could be in jeopardy. Many jurisdictions don’t have in place proper safeguards, which create new opportunities for fraud.
The goal of the coursework is to provide sound understanding of how computer security is critical to the election process in broadly applicable sense and what we need to do to keep the election secure.
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of CongressCR.docxdonnajames55
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Order Code RL33190
The Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machine
(DRE) Controversy: FAQs and Misperceptions
December 14, 2005
Eric A. Fischer
Senior Specialist in Science and Technology
Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Kevin J. Coleman
Analyst in American National Government
Government and Finance Division
The Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machine (DRE)
Controversy: FAQs and Misperceptions
Summary
Most voting systems used in U.S. elections rely on computers in some way. The
most computerized is the direct recording electronic voting machine, or DRE. In this
system, votes are recorded directly onto computer memory devices. While DREs
have been in use since the early 1990s, questions about their security and reliability
were previously a relatively minor issue, even following the November 2000
presidential election and the subsequent congressional deliberations leading to the
enactment of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA, P.L. 107-252).
However, at least two factors led to a sharp increase in public concerns about
DREs beginning in 2003. First, the voting accessibility provisions in HAVA
promote the use of DREs, which have been the only kind of voting system that can
meet the HAVA requirements to permit persons with disabilities, including
blindness, to vote privately and independently. Second, potential security
vulnerabilities with DREs were publicized as a result of several studies. Several bills
have been introduced in the 109th Congress that would address these issues in
different ways.
In the public debate about DREs, there has been some confusion about what the
problems and issues are, arising to a significant degree from the complexity of DREs
and of elections in general. This confusion can lead to misperceptions about facts as
well as issues and options for resolving them. Points worth noting include the
following:
DREs do have unique security concerns and have not been thoroughly tested in
the scientific community. However, most election problems in 2004 were not
associated with DREs. Security flaws in them are not known to have compromised
any elections, and it is not clear how much of a threat those vulnerabilities pose to
election integrity in practice, especially in comparison to other kinds of threats. The
different models of DREs in current use vary substantially in design, and problems
that one model exhibits may not occur in others. Many of those problems are
procedural, not weaknesses in the technology itself.
It is not clear whether the unique security problems posed by DREs are best
addressed by requiring that they produce paper ballots or by other means. While
paper has useful security properties and is well-known, other methods exist that
might be superior. Furthermore, paper ballots used with DREs (called voter-verified
paper audit trails, or VVPAT) are largel.
A MULTIPLE BALLOTS ELECTION SCHEME USING ANONYMOUS DISTRIBUTIONIJNSA Journal
Electronic voting is an important application for security protocols. Most existing voting schemes are designed for elections in which each voter has only one ballot. However, some elections permit voters to cast multiple ballots. In this paper, we present a new voting scheme in which each voter can have multiple ballots, and can vote for multiple candidates. The proposed scheme allows the voter to simply pick their candidates and post a single encrypted message. Anonymous distribution of secret information is used so that no one knows which information is being passed to whom.
is work's main purpose is to provide a secure voting system that fits all of the voting process' requirements, including authentication, confidentiality, and morality. Simplicity is also required to guarantee that ordinary people participate. Other factors to consider are dependability, convenience, flexibility, mobility, and affordability, in addition to security and simplicity. We wanted to build a system where the whole encryption and decryption of the ballots is transparent and nevertheless safe to ensure that the user utilizes a secure voting system.
This lecture deals with the Humanistic Communication approach in e-Democracy. It has to delve into the structure of communication tools serving the purpose of better decision making for the citizen.
George Cambourakis, Board Member, European Communication Institute, GR
UNCOERCIBILITY IN E-VOTING AND EAUCTIONING MECHANISMS USING DENIABLE ENCRYPTIONIJNSA Journal
The uncoercibility to prevent rigging in e-voting and e-auction have been studied in different literatures. It is realized that the notion of a virtual booth and untappable channel are required to prevent coerciveness. Virtual booth protects the candidates to cast their private values without being observed by the adversary/coercer. However the adversary can influence the candidates after their casting. Adversary used to acquire the encrypted votes/bids either from the colluded authorities (voting server, auctioneer) or by eavesdropping the communicating channel and coerces the candidates to disclose their private values with the private keys and verifies whether the ciphers are the encryption of the private values. In the prior literatures of e-voting and e-auctioning, threshold-encryption and receipt-free mechanism are used to prevent the coercion and collusion respectively. But they assumed untappable channel to restrict eavesdropping. However, practically untappable channel is difficult to achieve. It should be a dedicated trusted link or continuous fiber link to implement untappable channel.
This is the June 2022 issue of the Journal of Physical Security. In addition to the usual editor’s rants and news about security, this issue has papers about ZigBee vulnerabilities, practical password cracking, humor & security, the costs of police body camera video storage, tips for reducing security guard turnover, and FDA & DHS blessing of security technologies.
Back issues of the Journal can be found at http://jps.rbseurity.com
Vulnerability Assessment: The Missing Manual for the Missing Link Roger Johnston
Vulnerability Assessment: The Missing Manual for the Missing Link. Now available as an ebook, paperback, or hardcover.
This book is written by a Vulnerability Assessor with 35+ years of experience. The book covers the common misconceptions and problems with how Security Vulnerability Assessments are thought of and done. Various security tips and advice are also offered. If you do or think about security, you need this book!
This March 2021 issue of the Journal of Physical Security has papers on:
• tax credits for physical security R&D
• pinhole cameras for surreptitious surveillance
• insider threat issues
• tamper-indicating seals for fast food in the era of Covid
• security for sealed radiological sources
Back issues are available for free at https://jps.rbsekurity.com
This is the Oct 2020 issue with the usual security news and editor's rants, plus Viewpoint papers on Security Assurance and Election Security.
Back issues are available at http://jps.rbsekurity.com
A New Approach to Vulnerability AssessmentRoger Johnston
Most organizations don't do Vulnerability Assessment, or confuse them with something else, or do them but not very effectively, imaginatively, or proactively, thinking like the bad guys. Here is some practical advice for how to do better from a Vulnerability Assessor with 35+ years of experience.
We can't test our way to good #security. Why? Because we can't test—or prevent—what we have not envisioned. (Think 9/11.) Effective, imaginative vulnerability assessments are essential. This book explains how to do them based on the 35+ years experience of a Vulnerability Assessor.
This book is the missing manual for the missing link: It provides practical advice on how to do effective, imaginative, proactive Vulnerability Assessments based on the authors 30+ years of experience as a vulnerability assessor.
In addition to the usual security news and editor's rants about security, this issue (Volume 12, Issue 3) has papers about:
• automatic vehicle security gates
• 3D magnetometer arrays as a more secure replacement for BMS
• best practices in physical security
• design reviews vs. vulnerability assessments
JPS, a peer reviewed journal, is hosted by Right Brain Sekurity as a free public service. See http://jps.rbsekurity.com
In addition to the usual security news and editor’s rants about security, this (August 2019) issue has papers about security by design,defeating electronic locks with radio frequency attack tools, poor seal practice with pressure-sensitive adhesive label seals, wargaming Brexit, and a revised and updated list of popular (mostly smart ass) security maxims.
This is the August 2018 issue of the Journal of Physical Security (JPS). In addition to the usual editor’s rants about security, this issue has papers on
• election security
• physical security networks
• technology for tracking sealed radiological sources
• an analysis of active shooter training videos
• whether security belongs under Facility Management (Operations)
JPS is hosted as a public service by Right Brain Sekurity, a small company devoted to vulnerability assessments, security consulting, and R&D.
Volume 10, issue 1 (July 2017) of the Journal of Physical Security. This issue has papers about:
• The “Rule of Two” for firefights
• Security and forensic criminology
• A vulnerability assessment of “indelible” voter’s ink used for elections in many developing countries
• Security outsourcing in Nigeria
• How Compliance can sometimes harm Security
• Unconventional security metrics and “Marginal Analysis”
• Common security reasoning errors
In a May 9, 2024 paper, Juri Opitz from the University of Zurich, along with Shira Wein and Nathan Schneider form Georgetown University, discussed the importance of linguistic expertise in natural language processing (NLP) in an era dominated by large language models (LLMs).
The authors explained that while machine translation (MT) previously relied heavily on linguists, the landscape has shifted. “Linguistics is no longer front and center in the way we build NLP systems,” they said. With the emergence of LLMs, which can generate fluent text without the need for specialized modules to handle grammar or semantic coherence, the need for linguistic expertise in NLP is being questioned.
01062024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
हम आग्रह करते हैं कि जो भी सत्ता में आए, वह संविधान का पालन करे, उसकी रक्षा करे और उसे बनाए रखे।" प्रस्ताव में कुल तीन प्रमुख हस्तक्षेप और उनके तंत्र भी प्रस्तुत किए गए। पहला हस्तक्षेप स्वतंत्र मीडिया को प्रोत्साहित करके, वास्तविकता पर आधारित काउंटर नैरेटिव का निर्माण करके और सत्तारूढ़ सरकार द्वारा नियोजित मनोवैज्ञानिक हेरफेर की रणनीति का मुकाबला करके लोगों द्वारा निर्धारित कथा को बनाए रखना और उस पर कार्यकरना था।
03062024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
role of women and girls in various terror groupssadiakorobi2
Women have three distinct types of involvement: direct involvement in terrorist acts; enabling of others to commit such acts; and facilitating the disengagement of others from violent or extremist groups.
31052024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
‘वोटर्स विल मस्ट प्रीवेल’ (मतदाताओं को जीतना होगा) अभियान द्वारा जारी हेल्पलाइन नंबर, 4 जून को सुबह 7 बजे से दोपहर 12 बजे तक मतगणना प्रक्रिया में कहीं भी किसी भी तरह के उल्लंघन की रिपोर्ट करने के लिए खुला रहेगा।
1. Journal of Physical Security 13(1), 5-7 (2020)
5
Viewpoint Paper
A Vulnerability Assessor’s Views on U.S. Election Security*
Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D., CPP
http://rbsekurity.com
Based on 30+ years of being a Vulnerability Assessor for a wide variety of security
applications, doing multiple formal and informal Vulnerability Assessments on various election
jurisdictions and observing others, demonstrating attacks on voting machines, and having been
a local election judge for a number of elections, here are some observations and views that I
can offer about election security in the United States:
1. In my view, vote-by-mail is likely to be more secure, not less, than in-person voting. There
are fewer insiders to worry about—not that election jurisdictions (or other organizations for
that matter) do enough to mitigate the insider threat. (They often fail to deploy various easy
and low-cost countermeasures.) Moreover, vote-by-mail automatically requires a paper Voter
Verified Record, the lack of which severely compromises election security in some states. An
additional factor is that many election jurisdictions do vote-by-mail using optical scanning,
which is theoretically more secure than other methods, though it must be said that few election
jurisdictions seem to optimize the security of optical scanners or optical scanning procedures.
2. Election officials (including election judges) need serious training/practice on handwriting
comparison, and access to handwriting experts, regardless of the voting scheme. Only a
fraction of election jurisdictions do the former.
3. Elections in any form are generally more secure when there is large voter turnout because
more votes have to be stolen and the conspiracy needs to be larger, increasing the chances of
getting caught. (This is different from many other kinds of security applications where more
volume means less security.) Vote-by-mail may increase voter participation.
4. Large voter turnout tends to occur in close elections where the most is at stake and people
care the most. Thus, election security effectiveness tends to scale with importance of the
election, which is a good thing.
5. The Security Culture seems to be poor in most U.S. election jurisdictions, making it difficult to
have good security regardless of the type of voting being done.
________
*This paper was not peer reviewed.
2. Journal of Physical Security 13(1), 5-7 (2020)
6
6. The use of tamper-indicating seals seems to be poor to comically inept in most election
jurisdictions. It would not be particularly difficult or expensive to remedy this if the jurisdictions
cared to do so. Also, the locks and “secure” containers in use are often trivial to defeat.
7. Cyber attacks on voting systems are often the focus, but physical and electronic attacks are
much easier and require less sophistication—though they do require physical access for a
minute or two. That is typically no problem.
8. The physical security at most election jurisdictions appears to be fairly poor, especially at
election warehouses.
9. Current testing of voting machines for tampering is totally ineffective for detecting cyber
attacks, and especially for detecting physical/electronic attacks.
10. Both the strength and the weakness of the U.S. electoral systemis that the 8,000 to 10,000
election jurisdictions in the United States mostly do things their own way, with little guidance
from the federal government, and often minimal guidance from the state government. This
makes it very challenging for an adversary to steal a national election by tampering with votes
and voting machines, but it also means some jurisdictions make it very easy to tamper with
votes and voting machines locally because of the wacky way they do things using election
officials who are almost always security amateurs.
11. Stealing a local election by tampering with votes and voting machines is probably fairly easy
in most election jurisdictions, but tampering on a national scale is very unlikely to succeed. The
one caveat is that in very close elections, it might be possible for an adversary to identify the
small number of local election jurisdictions that need to be attacked to sway the national
results. This requires accurate polls at the state, county, and city level, but recent polling for
Presidential elections has not been particularly accurate.
12. Selecting the President by popular vote instead of by the Electoral College would greatly
improve election security (and make the choice more representative of the voters’ will).
13. For the November 2020 election, at least 11 states and the District of Columbia allow some
form of ballot tracking. This is generally going to be a good security practice. Ballot tracking
allows voters to go online to check on the status of their vote, and to see if someone has
requested a ballot or voted a ballot in their name. The United States Postal Service also allows
mail tracking so that a voter can monitor the status of a ballot being mailed to him or her.
14. Beyond penalties for vote tampering, an adversary tampering with vote-by-mail ballots
may face serious charges of mail fraud, theft, and trespassing.
15. Election jurisdictions that require a ballot request before mailing a ballot to the voter
probably have slightly better security than election jurisdictions that automatically mail ballots
to all registered voters, though I suspect the difference in security is currently marginal.
3. Journal of Physical Security 13(1), 5-7 (2020)
7
16. Vote-by-mail clearly requires there to be a random virtual numeric token attached to the
ballot sleeve or envelope that is mailed back by the voter. This is simply a randomized number
(or barcode) that an adversary cannot guess which shows that the ballot is legitimate. A fake or
counterfeit ballot would lack the correct number. This random virtual numeric token is one-
time use and must be different for every voter and different in each new election. It can be a
hash derived from the voter’s name or voter ID number, though hashes have been broken
before. A better approach is to generate a random number using a pseudo-random number
generator—though this needs to be frequently reseeded by a hardware-generated random
number. The database of the numeric tokens for each voter must, of course, be kept secure.
17. Some election officials are considering specialty ballot paper and/or secret marks on the
ballots to indicated ballot authenticity. I am skeptical of this approach because few
jurisdictions can afford this or the analysis hardware, or have the time to analyze more than a
very small percentage of ballots. Moreover, I know from first-hand experience that secret
marks are difficult to keep hidden or secret, and that counterfeiting security technology is often
much easier than people, manufacturers, and vendors assume. More the point, I have
repeatedly found it to be quite easy to simply mimic the one or small number of physical or
optical properties being measured to check for authenticity. And the devices (“readers”) used
to read the relevant properties can usually be easily and quickly tampered with.
18. Mail-in-ballots (and the ballot envelopes) can always be analyzed for fingerprints and DNA
should a serious inquiry be necessary as to the authenticity of certain ballots.
19. One of the disadvantages of vote-by-mail is that the identity of the voter and how he/she
voted are connected for a much longer period of time than for in-person voting. This may
negatively impact privacy—a citizen’s right to vote in secret. I think this is a relatively minor
risk, and of less concern than election security.
20. Why should an adversary risk tampering with votes and voting machines (especially at the
national level) when this is illegal, at least in theory? It is much easier, safer, cheaper, and likely
more effective, to do some or all of the following:
a. Voter Suppression—generally legal and rarely punished politically by the voters.
b. Voter Intimidation—technically illegal in many election jurisdictions but rarely prosecuted.
c. Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories via Social Media—totally legal and quite effective.
Done well by U.S. citizens, fairly well by the Russians, and ineptly by China and Iran.
d. Sow Chaos, Discord, Disillusionment, and Cynicismto Discourage Voting—a kind of Voter
Suppression. Seemingly done fairly well by U.S. citizens and the Russians.
21. For more suggestions on election security, see https://tinyurl.com/ya3djq4t
For practical tips on improving any kind of security, see
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C9D73Z9