Microsoft and Security Expert Make the Case for End-To-End Verifiability in Municipal Elections
Neuvote has the most secure on-line voting system in the world, powered by Microsoft’s ElectionGuard and its cryptographic End-To-End Verifiable Voting system. Commented Matthew Heuman, Neuvote CEO and Founder, “ElectionGuard's E2E Verifiability makes elections transparent, secure and auditable”.
To make the case, we hosted a webcast on April 21st featuring a cybersecurity and online voting expert and Microsoft's Defending Democracy team to share critical information about the need for End-To-End Verifiability to secure online voting and in particular, online voting by Municipalities. The webcast also outlined how ElectionGuard’s cryptography works to achieve secure online voting.
Featured on the webcast were: Dr. Aleks Essex, Associate Professor, Software Engineering, University of Western Ontario; and from Microsoft, Dr. Josh Benaloh Head of Research for ElectionGuard, RC Carter and David Leichtman from Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Initiative that is tasked with commercializing ElectionGuard.
Key Takeaways
· There is significant demand for and interest in moving away from the paper ballot to online voting to reduce costs and administration and to increase accessibility and convenience.
· But there is a need to preserve the integrity of the electronic vote and to assure voters that their votes are cast as intended, counted as cast and protected from tampering.
· End-to-End Verifiability through cryptography is the key to ensuring the security of on-line voting.
· Microsoft, as part of its Defending Democracy Initiative, developed ElectionGuard’s End-to-End Verifiability system to achieve on-line election integrity and security.
· Beward: Not all online voting vendors have true End-to-End Verifiability. According to the Microsoft team, the process has to be open, published with verification codes that match actual votes.
An Invitation
During the Q&A at the end of the webcast, participants were invited to contact the Microsoft team and/or Neuvote to answer any questions they may have about moving to and/or securing their on-line voting.
If you want to learn more about ElectionGuard and End-to-End Verifiability for elections, click here to view the webcast replay.