Notes from the Electronic Cottage 10/20/22: Election Voting Security

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

It’s election season and we’re hearing a lot of stuff that is pretty unbelievable. But we aren’t hearing much about voting machine companies doctoring votes at this point in time. Why is that? Hmmm. But even if we aren’t hearing a lot of about alleged voting machine fraud now, it’s still important to think about how we might guarantee that vote counting is accurate. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) thinks so and in October of 2022 released a TechBrief entitled “Election Security: Risk Limiting Audits.” It’s brief and offers Risk Limiting Audits (RLA) as a tool to ensure that electronic vote counting is accurate and transparent. Only four pages and definitely worth reading, here

About the host:
Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon’s words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station’s sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage.