ELECTION TECH: This post appeared on the Symantec voting security blog on Oct. 16, 2018.
How can we prevent future interference by foreign rivals seeking to game the system? Some see an answer by turning back to a second century discovery.
Paper.
No, that isn’t a typo.
Only paper – or, more precisely, a verifiable paper trail – will do, according a blue-ribbon panel of mostly academics and election officials working under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Their two-year examination of the nation’s election process is the latest chapter in a continuing debate about how elections officials ought to use the tools at their disposal to better preserve our democracy’s secret ballot, a public conversation first set off by the “hanging-chads” controversy in the 2000 presidential race.
Patrick Houston: A Portfolio 