MCS@Rice Webinar: Adventures in Electronic Voting Research

Abstract:

Elections must satisfy a variety of seemingly contradictory properties. We need convincing evidence that the election tallies are correct, while we cannot keep evidence that might link voters to their votes. Voting systems must be simple and easy to use for the entire voting population and cheap to purchase and operate for voting officials. And, on top of all that, they must be resistant to attacks from the most talented nation-state adversaries, without requiring the same sophistication on the part of the defenders. This talk will describe some of our efforts to understand vulnerabilities in existing voting systems, and how we should engineer such systems correctly.

Bio:

Dan S. Wallach is a Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His research considers a variety of different computer security topics.