Computer Security and Voting

It is now quite clear that most electronic voting systems were designed with only minor concern and rudimentary knowledge of computer security. Over the past five years, people with more in-depth knowledge of computer security have helped tremendously in appraising the security of current systems and, to a lesser extent, in improving the security of voting systems. This talk will highlight the ways a computer security perspective might be able to contribute to more trustworthy voting systems, as well as some of the ways that voting is different from other computer security problems.

David Dill is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. He has over 25 years of research experience developing new formal verification technologies for hardware, software, and protocols, including co-founding 0-In Design Automation in 1996. In 2003, Prof. Dill wrote the "Resolution on Electronic Voting," which called for voter-verifiable audit trails on all voting systems and has been endorsed by over 10,000 individuals, including many leading computer scientists. He is also the founder of VerifiedVoting.org, which champions reliable and publicly verifiable elections in the United States. He served on California's Task Force on Touch-Screen Voting, and has testified before the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the Carter-Baker Commission, and the U.S. Senate on the security of electronic voting systems.