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Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy
During the 2016 presidential election, America’s election infrastructure was targeted by a foreign government. According to assessments by members of the U.S. Intelligence Community, actors sponsored by the Russian government “obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards.” While the full extent and impact of these activities is not known and our understanding of these events is evolving, there is little doubt that these efforts represented an assault on the American system of representative democracy.
The vulnerability of election infrastructure to cyberattacks became a growing concern during the campaign leading up to the 2016 presidential election, and in fall 2016, the federal government took the unusual step of issuing a joint statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) urging state and local governments to be “vigilant and seek cyber security assistance from DHS.” In late December 2016, as the extent of Russian activities became apparent, President Barack Obama invoked sanctions against Russia for its efforts to disrupt the presidential election. In early 2017, the nation’s election systems were given critical infrastructure status.
Today, long-standing concerns about outdated and insecure voting systems and newer developments such as cyberattacks, the designation of election systems as critical infrastructure, and allegations of widespread voter fraud, have combined to focus attention on U.S. election systems and operations. The issues highlighted in 2016 add urgency to a careful reexamination of the conduct of elections in the United States and demonstrate a need to carefully consider trade-offs with respect to access and cyber security. This report responds to the needs of this moment.
The vulnerability of election infrastructure to cyberattacks became a growing concern during the campaign leading up to the 2016 presidential election, and in fall 2016, the federal government took the unusual step of issuing a joint statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) urging state and local governments to be “vigilant and seek cyber security assistance from DHS.” In late December 2016, as the extent of Russian activities became apparent, President Barack Obama invoked sanctions against Russia for its efforts to disrupt the presidential election. In early 2017, the nation’s election systems were given critical infrastructure status.
Today, long-standing concerns about outdated and insecure voting systems and newer developments such as cyberattacks, the designation of election systems as critical infrastructure, and allegations of widespread voter fraud, have combined to focus attention on U.S. election systems and operations. The issues highlighted in 2016 add urgency to a careful reexamination of the conduct of elections in the United States and demonstrate a need to carefully consider trade-offs with respect to access and cyber security. This report responds to the needs of this moment.
181 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2018
6 people want to read
About the author
Lee C. Bollinger
27 books5 followersLee C. Bollinger, J.D. (Columbia Law School), has served as the president of Columbia University since 2002 and is the longest serving Ivy League president. He is Columbia’s first Seth Low Professor of the University, a member of the Columbia Law School faculty, and one of the country’s foremost First Amendment scholars.
From 1996 to 2002, Bollinger was the president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He led the school’s litigation in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, resulting in Supreme Court decisions that upheld and clarified the importance of diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education. He speaks and writes frequently about the value of racial, cultural, and socio-economic diversity to American society through opinion columns, media interviews, and public appearances.
Bollinger served as a law clerk to Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court. He went on to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 1973, becoming dean of the school in 1987. He became provost of Dartmouth College in 1994 before returning to the University of Michigan in 1996 as president.
From 1996 to 2002, Bollinger was the president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He led the school’s litigation in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, resulting in Supreme Court decisions that upheld and clarified the importance of diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education. He speaks and writes frequently about the value of racial, cultural, and socio-economic diversity to American society through opinion columns, media interviews, and public appearances.
Bollinger served as a law clerk to Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court. He went on to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 1973, becoming dean of the school in 1987. He became provost of Dartmouth College in 1994 before returning to the University of Michigan in 1996 as president.
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January 1, 2022
"Just vote. Why is this so hard?"
Anyone who has ever asked such a question about U.S. elections, and especially anyone who thinks they know anything about what's wrong with the system or how to fix it, and MOST especially anyone who thinks for the tiniest fraction of a second that we should move to online voting, simply MUST read this report from the National Academies. As Matt Blaze frequently points out, this is the most thorough examination of the problem space, which he describes as the single most challenging field he has ever experienced in his long career as a security researcher, replete with mutually contradictory requirements, the biggest example of which is the tension between ballot secrecy and verifiability.
Getting it in print is, naturally for a serious academic publication, rather expensive; however, the PDF linked from the book record here is available for free download, so if you've ever had any interest in the topic—and if you are any American voter, you probably ought to have more than a little of that—would do well to click through and get a copy. As a production of the federal government, the focus is naturally rather more broad than particular, but given the bewildering array of thousands of state and local jurisdictions overseeing electoral process on the ground, thoroughness and specificity simply is not possible in a volume anyone could hope to get through without being paid to do so. It nevertheless provides pretty much all of the answers from bona fide experts to all of the common critiques and "simple solutions" of the I-did-my-own-research-in-20-minutes-on-Google crowd, while making perfectly clear from whence the real threats to our electoral democracy derive. Spoiler: it's not vote fraud.
Anyone who has ever asked such a question about U.S. elections, and especially anyone who thinks they know anything about what's wrong with the system or how to fix it, and MOST especially anyone who thinks for the tiniest fraction of a second that we should move to online voting, simply MUST read this report from the National Academies. As Matt Blaze frequently points out, this is the most thorough examination of the problem space, which he describes as the single most challenging field he has ever experienced in his long career as a security researcher, replete with mutually contradictory requirements, the biggest example of which is the tension between ballot secrecy and verifiability.
Getting it in print is, naturally for a serious academic publication, rather expensive; however, the PDF linked from the book record here is available for free download, so if you've ever had any interest in the topic—and if you are any American voter, you probably ought to have more than a little of that—would do well to click through and get a copy. As a production of the federal government, the focus is naturally rather more broad than particular, but given the bewildering array of thousands of state and local jurisdictions overseeing electoral process on the ground, thoroughness and specificity simply is not possible in a volume anyone could hope to get through without being paid to do so. It nevertheless provides pretty much all of the answers from bona fide experts to all of the common critiques and "simple solutions" of the I-did-my-own-research-in-20-minutes-on-Google crowd, while making perfectly clear from whence the real threats to our electoral democracy derive. Spoiler: it's not vote fraud.
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