How can technology help secure election infrastructure?

Secure, Holistic Infrastructure for Election Logistics and Data (SHIELD)

So What?

As adversaries have worked to disrupt voting systems and spread distrust in the legitimacy of elections, it is crucial to increase the security of voting systems and establish practices to restore trust in the validity of the process.

Project Summary

The project will develop tools and processes that harden the decentralized electoral systems in the U.S. The research team will design a formal process offering ways for election officials to develop strategies to boost security.

Purpose/Objectives

This project aims to support election systems by offering auditing tools. The project will model the components of an election system for election officials, accounting for security, privacy, and financial concerns.

Method

The project is organized around the principles and practices of creating a secure process for electoral systems. The researchers will first develop tools and techniques that support verifiable security by drawing upon established techniques as well as new technologies developed to make the process of auditing and tabulation more efficient. Then, they will create models to build a verifiably secure system, using cryptography, to establish how these techniques can be used in the future.

Outputs and Impact

• Reports on optimizing standard for election reporting, analyzing elections and their components, and specifying procedures

• Forum on elections

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	Benjamin Fuller, Ph.D. University of Connecticut Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Co-director of the Connecticut Advanced Computing Center Expertise: Applied Cryptography, Information Theory
	Ghada Almashaqbeh, Ph.D. University of Connecticut Assistant Professor of Computer Science Expertise: Cryptography, Computer Systems Security, Privacy
	Laurent Michel, Ph.D. University of Connecticut Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Expertise: Modeling and Programming Languages, Combinatorial Optimization, Constraint Programming
	Alexander Russell, Ph.D. University of Connecticut Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics Director of the UConn Voting Technology Research Lab Expertise: Electronic Voting Security, Cryptography, Statistical Election Auditing