Trustworthy Electronic Voting

After the voting debacle in the Florida Presidential election of 2000 with its now-fabled hanging chads and pregnant chads, many voting jurisdictions turned to electronic voting machines (which are basically PCs with touch screens). This transition has had at least as many problems as punched-card systems and added the additional one of making recounts impossible. As a result, many jurisdictions have gone back to paper ballots in despair. We believe that electronic voting has real advantages over paper ballots but requires regarding voting as a system of which the voting machine is only a (small) part. Unlike much previous work, the emphasis is on the systems aspects, defense in depth, and being paranoiac, rather than being primarily based on cryptography.

We are currently implementing the software of the voting machine. Our goal for the voting software is for it to be simple and small. A smaller codebase is easier to verify and should decrease the amount of errors. If you are a student who may like to contribute, please email .