US Vote Blog

The book, "Vote for US: How to Take Back Our Elections and Change the Future of Voting", 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.

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.

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...

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. 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.

Reflecting on the 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.

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...

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 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.

Several startup companies have begun to promote Internet voting systems, this time with a new twist – using a blockchain as the container for voted ballots transmitted from voters’ private devices. Blockchains are a relatively new system category somewhat akin to a distributed database. Proponents promote them as a revolutionary innovation providing strong security guarantees that can render online elections safe from cyber attack.

Unfortunately, such claims are false....