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.
Georgia Continues to Tempt Fate This Election Season
If voting technology fails on Election Day, Georgia doesn’t have enough backup paper ballots to keep voting lines moving. Edward Perez, of the OSET Institute and Gowri Ramachandran, of the Brennan Center For Justice co-author this important and timely Op-Ed…
Swing Dance
During the coming weeks, America’s election infrastructure will be tested as perhaps never before, especially due to changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Add in threats of foreign interference, disinformation, intense polarization, and ill-founded presidential warnings of “rigged” results, and the country is in for a challenging election process. In that context, we present “Swing Dance,” our assessment of the process and technology risks that exist in the 14 most competitive states for the 2020 election…
New Cybersecurity Threats Require New Thinking on Testing and Certification
Ms. Voting Matters offers a summation of internal leadership discussion on the imperative topic of evolving election technology security; a longer article, but we think worth the read.
On an almost daily basis, there is mounting evidence that the scope of “election security” is wider than might appear at first blush. While much attention has been paid to “voting machines” and “voting systems” that capture and tabulate votes, there is growing awareness that other types of election-related software infrastructure are even more vulnerable by virtue of being network-connected: specifically, voter registration (VR) systems and Election Night Reporting (ENR) systems (which display results over the web, but which do not tabulate votes) have been found to be especially vulnerable. The question is how can cybersecurity testing and certification adapt?
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…
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...
Oh, Canada: Major Election Technology Research Collaboration with Elections Ontario
San-Francisco, CA — GET Summit We're announcing today, Day-2 of the Global Election Technology Summit underway in San Francisco, a unique collaboration with a Canadian partner, Elections Ontario....
Addressing the Impact of Voter Data Tampering
We are often asked to explain the impact of compromised voter data and we realized today that given some very relevant integrity engineering going on in the TrustTheVote Project its worth revisiting that for new citizens following our work, especially the growing #unhackthevote community.....
Wharton-OSET Election Technology Industry Study Released
The OSET Institute and Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative released a new study today, over a year in development, that provides a business analysis of the structure and outlook of the voting machine industry. Wharton made a 2-minute video overview to provide a very high-level overview . . .
Thinking Through How to Upgrade Democracy: This Weekend's UnConference
The OSET Institute was pleased to help underwrite a gathering of 170+ (over 100 actually were able to be there in person) ...true thought leaders on our home turf of Palo Alto this weekend...
With the Election Past; The Clock is Running
With the election behind us, regardless of how you view the results, one irrefutable fact remains... the 2016 general election is absolutely the last election the existing voting infrastructure of this nation can possibly support. Another fact is that the machinery of America's elections is on its last legs (literally)...
Announcing: Our Story in a New 2-Minute Video
Today we’re launching our story, in a 2-minute video developed by a team led by Meegan Gregg, our Director of Citizen Outreach. It involved an enormously generous grant from XPLANE .....
The Awful New Four Letter Word: "Rigged"
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt: the recipe for a disastrous election outcome. FUD attacks are one of the easiest ways to derail an election. This is a very tangential surface of the voting infrastructure deterioration problem... a problem the Obama Administration is finally asking us about, and while we cannot say more about that (yet) what we want to mention here is the horribly disturbing comments this morning from one campaign's officials about the likelihood of an illegitimate election this November. This is not kewl...
Showtime: OSET to Participate at DNC Convention on "Future of Democracy"
We are totally excited about an amazing opportunity tomorrow, Tuesday July 26th, to appear at an event as part of the Democrat National Convention. We'll be launching a new video...
Discussing Voter Participation Innovation at the White House
Today, our own Meegan Gregg, Director of Citizen Outreach, is participating in a planning workshop in advance of a Civic Initiative Kickoff Summit at the White House scheduled for later this summer. We are honored to be included in a conversation and planning session where the importance of innovating the ultimate act of voting itself is finally being incorporated into the discussion about innovating civic and voter engagement in general .....
A Brexit Foreshadow
The Brexit is a teachable moment for American democracy. No amount of voting technology work we have underway can address this in time for November, and its really a different issue altogether... actually making the effort to cast a ballot. Because if people fail to show this time... the result could be hugely unfortunate.
Democracy Rebooted; Some of it Left on the Cutting Room Floor
What a day! The Atlantic Council hosted an executive round table that featured an international group of 30 of the best minds in election administration and technology. One of our co-founders, Gregory Miller was fortunate to be included in that group of participants. There was an excellent two-hour discussion that can be seen here. Read on to learn about our responses.....
