The Future of Elections Could Be Open Source

The future leaders of the world could be secured by open source technology, thanks to the many new open source developments specifically targeted at improving the voting process. Leading the way is no less than Microsoft which, in partnership with Galois unveiled a new software development kit (SDK) called ElectionGuard. The kit aims to make elections more secure, accessible and efficient by allowing voters and third-party organizations to verify election results without disclosing what is in the individual recorded votes.

A Much Needed Intervention

Solutions like ElectionGuard were devised primarily because of past cases of election meddling and lax security that have caused many to lose confidence and trust in the modern election system. These cases include numerous reports of coordinated ballot tampering, network hacking and Russian interference in various elections. Historically the small number of private vendors that supply voting machines have been reluctant of having third-party audits for their products. But when third-party researchers did get a chance to probe these machines and commonly used voting software, they found extensive cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

With these past instances and the 2020 election looming ever closer, Microsoft’s new SDK could not have come at a better time.

Microsoft and Galois’ SDK can be integrated with the off-the-shelf software used in many of today’s voting machines, and can be used by just about anyone. It will be available to all on GitHub under an MIT Open Source License.

More to Come

ElectionGuard is far from the only open source project out there aimed at making elections more secure.
Galois is reported to have a $10 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency for another voting system that relies on open source hardware and software. The software source code will be made available to the public and its prototypes sent to the annual Def Con Voting Village to allow hackers to probe it for weaknesses.

With many other voting technology companies sprouting up and partnering with Microsoft and Galois including Democracy Live, Voting Works and MicroVote, there’s sure to be more open source developments in the area of election security.

Still Many Hurdles

Open source is shaping up to be the solution to which most are turning to secure the future of elections. As elections are supposed to be a reliable and transparent process, it seems only fitting that open source be the go-to solution to its issues. Open source software does expose code to the public, making it very transparent to all.

However there are still many hurdles in the way, among them private vendors, state laws and governments. Many private vendors will understandably resist an open source change, and there may also be several in government apprehensive of this change for one reason or another.

There’s also the question of reliability and security. While open source components may receive more security reviews than proprietary ones, there may be gaps in the security process if finding and fixing vulnerabilities is left to volunteers. Before any open source voting solution can move forward and become a standard, it must first overcome these obstacles, and that may take some time.