May 1, 2024

Archives for 2021

How lever-action voting machines really worked

Over the years I have written many articles about direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, precinct-count optical-scan (PCOS) voting machines, ballot-marking devices (BMDs), and other 21st-century voting technology. But I haven’t written much about 20th-century lever machines; these machines were banned by the U.S. Congress in the Help America Vote Act and have not been used […]

CITP is Hiring a Communications Manager

The Communications Manager at the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) will serve as the lead for all external and internal communications efforts of the center. This will include developing CITP’s content strategy and managing the center’s website, Freedom to Tinker blog, and social media presence. The position requires coordination and collaboration with researchers at […]

AI Nation podcast, from CITP and WHYY

I’m excited to introduce AI Nation: a podcast about AI, everyday life, and what happens when we delegate vital decisions to machines. It’s a collaboration, born at CITP, between Princeton University and WHYY, Philadelphia’s famous NPR station. The first episode drops on April 1. Tune in, and you’ll hear a variety of voices. You’ll hear […]

Voting Machine Hashcode Testing: Unsurprisingly insecure, and surprisingly insecure

By Andrew Appel and Susan Greenhalgh The accuracy of a voting machine is dependent on the software that runs it. If that software is corrupted or hacked, it can misreport the votes.  There is a common assumption that we can check the legitimacy of the software that is installed by checking a “hash code” and […]

Georgia’s election certification avoided an even worse nightmare that’s just waiting to happen next time

Voters in Georgia polling places, 2020, used Ballot-Marking Devices (BMDs), touchscreen computers that print out paper ballots; then voters fed those ballots into Precinct-Count Optical Scan (PCOS) voting machines for tabulation. There were many allegations about hacking of Georgia’s Presidential election. Based on the statewide audit, we can know that the PCOS machines were not […]