The recent Crowdstrike failure highlighted the threat technology issues could pose to the upcoming 2024 US presidential election. In addition to affecting airlines, banks, and other businesses around the globe, the Crowdstrike disruption also temporarily shut down voting stations in Arizona as the state’s voters were participating in early state-level primary elections. Following the shutdown, the Republican National Convention launched an investigation into what it called “alarming fragilities” in the US voting system.
The Crowdstrike event added to concerns that emerged from a recent report on security vulnerabilities in the voting system used in Georgia elections. The report, which was unsealed by a federal judge in June 2023, states that the system in question is “so insecure that it violates voters’ constitutional rights.”
As US officials look to protect elections from tech failure and hacking, a number of issues should be addressed.
Systems should Leverage Modern Methodologies
Modern methodologies are more than adequate for empowering a fast, efficient, and transparent voting process. Yet those methodologies have been consistently sidelined in favor of obtuse contracts, closed-source software and methodologies, and selective data sharing that does not inspire confidence in the integrity of the process. As a result, the current electoral process lacks a crucial system for verifying whether each vote is unique, made by an eligible voter, and comes from a trusted source that can confirm the voter’s identity.
Higher education utilizes systems that confirm the identity of students submitting tests. By enabling the use of similar technologies in the voting process, officials can prevent abuse and ensure all votes are legitimate. Zero-knowledge proofs are a technology solution that can empower more reliable voter identification while keeping voters’ selections private.
Nationwide Standards Should be Established
The lack of standardization across state lines in how votes are processed, managed, or stored has led to significant fear of electoral fraud. While there is no tangible evidence of widespread fraud, there is an opportunity to reduce intangible fears by instituting a nationwide process.
Just as the federal government has defined basic standards for banking, healthcare, and other critical industries, it is time to set some basic standards of care in the electoral process’s supply chain. Requiring a prominent system that verifies the voter’s identity, performs a set of checks and balances to eliminate any potential error or fraud, and allows for the minimization of physical barriers, locations, or accessibility issues would be a big step toward restoring confidence across party lines.
Real-time Tabulation Should be Pursued
In US elections, votes are cast via ballots, and results are tabulated at a later time. As a result, each individual vote is not immediately confirmed but interpreted later by voting officials. This process of delayed election results has often led to concerns about voting integrity.
To improve the system, the delays in counting, batch processing, recounting, or verifying anomalous data must be addressed. Ideally, votes should be counted and processed in real time. There have been too many documented cases of errors in counting votes due to faulty scanners, improper operation of voting machines, errors in aggregating or collating data, and visual bugs that impaired the ability of voters to ensure their selection was correctly registered.
As the 2024 US presidential race heats up, concerns about election integrity are beginning to surface. Officials responsible for ensuring integrity should leverage proven technology in every way possible to improve security, accuracy, and transparency.
– Yashin Manraj, CEO of Pvotal Technologies, has served as a computational chemist in academia, an engineer working on novel challenges at the nanoscale, and a thought leader building more secure systems at the world’s best engineering firms. His deep technical knowledge from product development, design, business insights, and coding provides a unique nexus to identify and solve gaps in the product pipeline.
The Pvotal mission is to build sophisticated enterprises with no limits that are built for rapid change, seamless communication, top-notch security, and scalability to infinity.
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