Cybersecurity For Elections

Information and communication technologies are increasingly prevalent in electoral management and democratic processes, even for countries without any form of electronic voting. These technologies offer numerous new opportunities, but also new threats. Cybersecurity is currently one of the greatest electoral challenges. It involves a broad range of actors, including electoral management bodies, cybersecurity expert bodies and security agencies. Many countries have found that interagency collaboration is essential for defending elections against digital threats. In recent years significant advances have been made in organizing such collaboration at the domestic and international levels. This guide tracks how countries are making progress on improving cybersecurity in elections. Based on an extensive collection of 20 case studies from all over the world, it provides lessons for those wanting to strengthen their defences against cyberattacks.

The use of computers and other technology introduces a range of risks to electoral integrity. Cybersecurity for Elections explains how cybersecurity issues can compromise traditional aspects of elections, explores how cybersecurity interacts with the broader electoral environment, and offers principles for managing cybersecurity risks.

During the 2016 presidential election, America's election infrastructure was targeted by actors sponsored by the Russian government. Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy examines the challenges arising out of the 2016 federal election, assesses current technology and standards for voting, and recommends steps that the federal government, state and local governments, election administrators, and vendors of voting technology should take to improve the security of election infrastructure. In doing so, the report provides a vision of voting that is more secure, accessible, reliable, and verifiable.

U.S. election systems are diverse in terms of governance and technology. This reflects the constitutional roles reserved for the states in administering and running elections but makes it challenging to develop a national picture of cybersecurity risk in election systems. Moreover, it requires each state and jurisdiction to evaluate and prioritize risk in the systems it oversees. With funding from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, researchers from the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center have developed a methodology for understanding and prioritizing cybersecurity risk in election infrastructure to assist state and local election officials.

The cybersecurity of election systems has long been a central focus of election officials and the federal government, starting with the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002 and, more recently, in 2017 with the designation of elections as a critical infrastructure subsector. Federal partners in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are supporting the election community, including election officials and vendors, to improve cybersecurity. More recently, this focus has expanded to concerns about the supply chain of components that are integral to election system equipment. This concern for the cybersecurity of supply chains is found throughout industry as organizations strive to protect their equipment and customers from cyber threats. In this Perspective, RAND Corporation researchers lay out the considerations for securing election system supply chains against cyber threats and how the federal government can partner with state and local officials and the vendor community to understand where risk lies in the supply chain. The Perspective discusses how existing tools and approaches can be adapted and used to facilitate cyber supply chain risk management. It should be of interest to federal, state, and local election officials who will manage their relationships with the manufacturers of election equipment; to manufacturers that will, in turn, manage their relationships with their suppliers; and to those developing tools for mapping supply chains and assessing supply chain risk.

Cybersecurity expert Theresa Payton tells battlefront stories from the global war being conducted through clicks, swipes, internet access, technical backdoors and massive espionage schemes. She investigates the cyberwarriors who are planning tomorrow’s attacks, weaving a fascinating tale of Artificial Intelligent mutations carrying out attacks without human intervention, “deepfake” videos that look real to the naked eye, and chatbots that beget other chatbots. Finally, Payton offers readers telltale signs that their most fundamental beliefs are being meddled with and actions they can take or demand that corporations and elected officials must take before it is too late. The updated paperback edition, including new information on real world cases of AI, chatgpt, tiktok, and all the latest and greatest exploits of manipulation campaigns, will leave readers both captivated and chilled to the bone.

As the American election administration landscape changes as a result of major court cases, national and state legislation, changes in professionalism, and the evolution of equipment and security, so must the work of on-the-ground practitioners change. This Open Access title presents a series of case studies designed to highlight practical responses to these changes from the national, state, and local levels. This book is designed to be a companion piece to The Future of Election Administration, which surveys these critical dimensions of elections from the perspectives of the most forward-thinking practitioner, policy, advocacy, and research experts and leaders in these areas today. Drawing upon principles of professionalism and the practical work that is required to administer elections as part of the complex systems, this book lifts up the voices and experiences of practitioners from around the country to describe, analyze, and anticipate the key areas of election administration systems on which students, researchers, advocates, policy makers, and practitioners should focus. Together, these books add to the emerging body of literature that is part of the election sciences community with an emphasis on the practical aspects of administration.

Election cybersecurity is an important element of democratic resilience. And because the activities performed across the electoral process are interrelated, security compromises or breaches to one stakeholder can have wide-reaching effects. This report focuses on the United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia Pacific and were divided into four sub-topics: technology, policy, collaboration, and skills and resources. They highlighted the importance of a broad approach to election security and identified challenges and best practices that are summarised in this report. This report takes an in-depth look at what cybersecurity players are doing to protect the integrity of elections around the world, from fighting the spread of false information which might prevent voters from forming opinions based on accurate information to securing voter data and election results from manipulation attempts. This report offers ten recommendations to improve the cybersecurity of elections with a whole- of-society approach. Governments, industry, political parties, media, civil society, non-profit organisations, and citizens themselves all have a role to play in collectively improving the integrity of our elections.

For many years now, cryptography has been keeping messages secure for senders, irrespective of the routing to the destination. This same technology can be used to keep votes secure for voters, from the casting of the vote all the way through to the inclusion of the vote in the final tally. This state-of-the-art survey addresses the challenges faced in establishing a trustworthy electronic voting system. The 24 contributions included in the volume were carefully reviewed and selected from the presentations given during a series of workshops on trustworthy elections held over the last decade. Topics addresses range from foundational and theoretical aspects to algorithms and systems issues, as well as applications in various fields.

Voting is the cornerstone of American democracy and a fundamental right of all Americans. Our existence as a democratic republic is only made possible and legitimate through free and fair elections. Each American's voice should be heard, but to ensure that, we must protect the ballot box. Like everything else in the digital age, however, voting can be vulnerable to hacking. There are about 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide that administer elections, and even within States, counties use different systems and different technologies to conduct elections. While no longer on the table for this election cycle, State and local election officials, including Secretary Kemp, who is here today, have expressed concern that classifying the election system as critical infrastructure would effectively be a Federal takeover of what has always been a local process. According to security experts, a massive attack against the infrastructure as a whole is not the biggest cyber vulnerability in the election process. Rather, it is the individual voting machines that pose some of the greatest risk. According to a 2015 report from the Brennan Center for Justice, many voting machines were designed and engineered in the 1990s or early 2000s. These machines were designed before the Internet base of sort of advanced cyber risks that now are all too common in our current threat environment. Beyond cyber attacks, these machines are also vulnerable to operational failures like crashes and glitches. As one security expert at Rice University put it, "These machines, they barely work in a friendly environment."