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  • Blockchain: A Lesson in Obfuscation

    By Jim Waldo, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science

    One can hardly throw a brick in Silicon Valley these days without hitting the CEO of a new blockchain startup. Whether it be cyber security, supply chain management, voting, or most anything else, it doesn’t matter what the question is. The answer is blockchain.

    As the characters in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy discovered, knowing the ultimate answer isn’t much good without knowing the question. But there is no question associated with blockchain. Instead, the enthusiasm and hype around a hopelessly flawed technology leads us to another Theranos moment, when hope, enthusiasm, and vision bring us to the point of committing fraud on the non-technical public. We should know better.

    Let me be clear that I’m not talking about some of the individual ideas behind blockchain. Having a public ledger that can’t be changed by using cryptographic hashing functions may be useful; it has been well known (under the name of a Merkel chain) for a considerable period of time.

  • New book about positive voting reforms: Vote for US - the People

    This blog originally appeared on Rick Hasen's, Election Law Blog [https://electionlawblog.org/?p=104599] on April 9, 2019.
     
    By Joshua Douglas

    The following is the first of three guest posts by University of Kentucky Law Professor Josh Douglas about his new book, Vote for US: How to Take Back Our Elections and Change the Future of Voting:

    ....

    The book is called Vote for US: How to Take Back Our Elections and Change the Future of Voting. It tells some truly inspiring stories of everyday Americans who are working in communities all over the country to fix our election system. In the process, the book advocates for various reforms to our democracy that are already seeing success in numerous local and state elections. And it highlights lot of amazing organizations that are taking on these efforts.

    Today I’ll focus on a few of the people I profile in the book – the Democracy Champions in communities all over who are at the forefront of improvements to state and local democracy.

  • Blockchain Voting: Unwelcome Disruption or Senseless Distraction?

    By Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, President and CEO, U.S. Vote Foundation and Overseas Vote

    It really gets old being a guinea pig. Not because of the cagey confines, but for the insistence of those who try their ideas out on you. Overseas and military voters continue to be the guinea pigs for unvetted online voting ideas, the new one being “blockchain voting”. We have been here before.

    Overseas and military voters do need continued meaningful reforms across all states, and it is good when people truly care enough to examine and invest in solutions. What we do not need is a distraction that introduces new threats to overseas and military ballot integrity. The cliché “disruption model” doesn’t belong in our elections. Particularly in light of Russia’s cyber-interference in elections in Ukraine in 2014 and the US in 2016, we should consider with extra caution the idea of putting the entire voting process online. Russia itself is pushing to use this same technology for voting. Maybe it is worth a deeper look at it before we rush to its implementation? Perhaps investment in a threat detection system, which most state election offices cannot yet afford, would, at minimum, be a wise first course of action.

  • Blockchain Voting: An imminent threat to democracy

    By Josh Greenbaum, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Vote Foundation

    So-called “blockchain voting” systems are exceedingly risky and vulnerable to a host of dangerous cybersecurity attacks. The growing hype around the implementation of this technology in elections is a distraction from fundamental election issues that beg for common sense solutions and resources to improve US election systems. Instead of working to solve this existing landscape of issues surrounding secure, verifiable, and auditable voting for all citizens, private companies and individuals are hyping an unknown and unproven technology that is more of a grifter’s dream than anything that could truly alleviate the many roadblocks that exist in our electoral systems.

    In addition to providing an unwelcome distraction from the real work needed to help secure our voting systems from a variety of threats, the reality is that blockchain voting systems are at best no more secure than any other type of web-based voting system, which themselves are rife with security and integrity issues. Indeed, blockchain voting systems are vulnerable to a multitude of profoundly serious threats that could easily allow cyber-attackers to control the outcome of an election. The potential for fraud and malfeasance makes blockchain voting a grave national security danger to our voting systems.

  • Blockchains for Voting: An idea whose time will never come

    Blog Source: Election Law Blog posted by Rick Hasen (https://electionlawblog.org/?p=104265)

    By Duncan Buell, NCR Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina and Advisor to U.S. Vote Foundation

    If you were to ask computing and election security experts for the two things they would most strongly oppose when it comes to elections, nearly all would probably answer: Internet voting and the use of blockchains in elections. There is nearly universal agreement that the Internet today is not sufficiently secure for something as important as elections, and that making it secure will be very hard indeed.
     
    Not only do blockchains add no value to the election process; blockchains actually introduce new vulnerabilities to the voting process. Nonetheless, several startup companies are promoting Internet voting and claiming their use of blockchains is a benefit. Not surprisingly, it seems that no purveyor of blockchain voting is willing to allow independent testing by experts to see if their claims are justified.
     
    The Internet, in general, is not a place for elections.  It is difficult, if not impossible, to authenticate a person attempting to vote over the Internet. It is impossible to guarantee that the voter’s computer has not been infected with malware. It is impossible to guarantee that a denial-of-service attack won’t take place. And it is impossible in current systems and those likely to be available in the near future to produce votes that can be audited without stripping out the voters’ right to a secret ballot.

  • Round Two: a visually-impaired voter tells her latest story

    by Pauline Ugalde - Second in a Series

    Reflecting on the 2018 mid-term elections, I decided to write about how I felt my experience as a visually-impaired voter impacted my voting rights. Furthermore, how it complicated what should be a simple process, what my observations were, what feedback I could give, and finally, to compare it to the process of voting in the 2016 elections.

    As in the last election, I traveled to my closest voting precinct to vote instead of voting by mail. I was optimistic about the prospect of using the audio-based voting machines. I hoped that they had been improved since 2016, or even better, replaced with machines that use the same accessibility technology that visually-impaired people use in their daily lives. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

  • Turnout in Local Elections: Is Timing Really Everything?

    This ABSTRACT of the original article, Turnout in Local Elections: Is Timing Really Everything? by Melissa Marschall and John Lappie in the Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy Vol. 17, No. 3 copyright and published by Mary Ann Liebert Publishers, Inc. The complete article is available here https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/elj.2017.0462

    Though it is often assumed that U.S. local elections are uniformly low turnout events, there is actually considerable variation across space and time. Building on literature on local turnout and broader theories of political participation, this study examines more than 1,000 California mayoral elections held between 1995 and 2014. We analyze how two specific features of the local electoral context—election timing and contestation—provide information, stimulate interest, mobilize voters, and ultimately shape turnout. We argue that high turnout may not mean much if voters have no decisions to make and explore the possibility that the effects of contestation may vary depending on whether elections are held off- or on-cycle.

  • GoVoteBot is back for the 2018 Midterm elections!

    Dear Readers - US Vote is proud to feature this blog from one of the best civic tech solutions developers we've had the honor to meet: R/GA and their brilliant team.

    Every American has their own highly-personal reasons for voting. Whether health, family, safety, income, or education, we aren’t voting for politicians, we’re voting for our personal interests and ideals. Despite our polarized reasons, many voters struggle with figuring out how to vote. It’s hard! America’s electoral system is complex, nuanced, and very frustrating.

    R/GA’s challenge? To create a solution that allows everyone (everywhere) to vote for whatever it is they want using a non-partisan campaign that keeps everyone’s pre-election concerns in mind.

  • The Widget Hits the World: Greenback Expat Tax Launches Overseas Voter Ballot Request

    By Carrie McKeegan, CEO and Co-Founder of Greenback Expat Tax Services

    Greenback Expat Tax Services is proud to partner with Overseas Vote Foundation and help boost expat voter registrations amongst Americans living abroad. We care deeply about all the issues expats face – not just taxes – so partnering with Overseas Vote is another way Greenback upholds its commitment to serving and advocating for the 9 million expats around the world.

    We believe that US expatriates are passionate about the US and care deeply about its future. In our 2018 US Expat Survey, which received input from 3,800+ US expats around the world, we found that 63.7% of Americans living abroad planned to vote in the November elections. These votes could play an important role because many states are won in too-close-to-call elections. American expats have a profound influence on the outcomes. With so many tax changes coming down the pike, it's crucial that expats rock the vote!

  • The voting process from a unique perspective: a first-time, visually-impaired voter tells her story

    By Pauline Ugalde

    The midterm election season is about to peak and I would like to address the voting process from a unique perspective: that of a first-time, visually-impaired voter and how that initial experience informs my decision to vote again in the upcoming midterm election.

    Over the years, I have noticed how people have primarily focused on the mechanical, physical process of voting versus a voter’s individual voting experience, let alone why they vote, or the emotions invoked by participating in this act which makes the United States a democratic nation. I intend to address the accessibility of preexisting voting systems and the emotions surrounding the occasion. In short: my reasons for voting profoundly affected my reactions to the act of voting itself.

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