This could be Microsoft's most important product in 2020. If it works

ElectionGuard isn't designed to make voting machines safe from hackers.

It's meant to make hacking them pointless.

Alfred Ng

Feb. 18, 2020

Building 83 doesn't stand out on Microsoft's massive Redmond, Washington, headquarters. But last week, the nameless structure hosted what might be the software giant's most important product of 2020.

Tucked away in the corner of a meeting room, a sign reading "ElectionGuard" identifies a touchscreen that asks people to cast their votes. An Xbox adaptive controller is connected to it, as are an all-white printer and a white ballot box for paper votes. If you didn't look carefully, you might have mistaken all that for an array of office supplies.

ElectionGuard is open-source voting-machine software that Microsoft announced in May 2019. In Microsoft's demo, voters make their choices by touchscreen before printing out two copies. A voter is supposed to double-check one copy before placing it into a ballot box to be counted by election workers. The other is a backup record with a QR code the voter can use to check that the vote was counted after polls close.

With ElectionGuard, Microsoft isn't setting out to create an unhackable vote no one thinks that's possible but rather a vote in which hacks would be quickly noticed.

The product demo was far quieter than the typical big tech launch. No flashy lights or hordes of company employees cheering their own product, like Microsoft's dual screen phone, its highly anticipated dual-screen laptop or its new Xbox Series X.

And yet, if everything goes right, ElectionGuard could have an impact that lasts well beyond the flashy products in Microsoft's pipeline.

ElectionGuard addresses what has become a crucial concern in US democracy: the integrity of the vote. The software is designed to establish end-to-end verification for voting machines. A voter can check whether his or her vote was counted. If a hacker had managed to alter a vote, it would be immediately obvious because encryption attached to the vote wouldn't have changed.

The open-source software has been available since last September. But Microsoft gets its first real-world test on Tuesday, when ElectionGuard is used in a local vote in Fulton, Wisconsin.

The local election will provide Microsoft an opportunity to find blind spots in the ElectionGuard system. The question is how many it will find. During ElectionGuard's first demo at the Aspen Security Forum last July, Microsoft identified some user experience flaws. A big one: Voters were confused as to why two sheets of paper were printing out.

"This is a critical, important part of why we're having this pilot next week," Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told a group of reporters at Building 83. "To find out, does this stuff all work? Do people verify? Do they do these things?"

ElectionGuard voting touchscreen, plus printer and ballot box

You could mistake the ElectionGuard setup for office supplies, what with the printer and ballot box next to the voting touchscreen. Alfred Ng / CNET

Voting machine

Hackers at Defcon have shown how easy it is to get through voting machines' cybersecurity. Alfred Ng / CNET

Many of these machines are still being used because red tape prevents software patches or the budget isn't available to replace them.

Even if no votes had been hacked, the vulnerabilities present another thing to fret about: disinformation about the integrity of election results. US officials consider that to be more worrisome than a cyberattack. If you can be convinced that your vote was hacked, you lose confidence in the results. That's potentially as powerful as the effects of an actual hack.

Microsoft isn't alone in proposing solutions to the problem. Since 2016, many tech giants have rolled out programs aimed at buttressing trust in the system. Google's Advanced Protection Program for political campaigns protects their accounts from basic cyberattacks. Facebook has plans to take on disinformation campaigns and protect campaigns that use the social network.

Still, Microsoft is the first major tech company to directly address voting machine infrastructure, the front line of election security. But it isn't promising that ElectionGuard prevents machines from being hacked. Rather, it's promising to make it obvious if a machine is hacked.

"This is not a system that cannot be hacked by an adversary. it is a system that is pointless for an adversary to hack," Burt said. "Even if they can figure out a way to somehow influence that or change that, it would be detected by the system, and you can go to the paper ballots and do a hand count if you needed to."

Technical difficulties

Most election security experts will tell you that technology and voting tend to make a bad cocktail.

It's why lawmakers like Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, has long advocated for paper ballots to keep elections secure. There's a long history of security concerns with election technology, and Microsoft is walking a tightrope with ElectionGuard.

MIT computer science researchers, for instance, found significant security issues with the Voatz mobile voting app, including the ability to change votes. Voatz said that the researchers' information was incomplete.

We just want to test, 'How does it work? What can we learn? What we need to change and improve?'

Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president for customer security and trust

And it doesn't require an expert to tell you that technology has failed democracy in the 2020 presidential campaign. The important Iowa caucuses crumbled under the rushed rollout of a vote-tallying app that was too complicated for election volunteers.

When asked about the Iowa caucuses, Anne Johnson, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Cybersecurity Solutions Group, couldn't help but laugh at the blunder.

"Let me just say, don't test in production," Johnson joked at the company's Redmond headquarters. "That wasn't a cybersecurity issue. That was a dev issue."

Microsoft has that maxim clearly in mind with ElectionGuard's debut. It's why the software giant deliberately worked with a small Wisconsin town that has about 500 registered voters. The vote is for the town's school board and a local judge. ElectionGuard will also serve as the backup to paper ballots, rather than the primary voting method.

Burt said the company hopes to learn how ElectionGuard gets used by voters, election officials and poll workers. The Wisconsin elections board decided in June 2019 to work with Microsoft on the pilot, but the ElectionGuard system hasn't been certified for standard use in the state, according to a statement from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

"We hope this pilot test will give us further insights into how the system works and whether voters like it," said Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. "We can use this data as we try to make elections in Wisconsin even more secure, usable and accessible."

The pilot is intended to be the first of many for Microsoft over the next few years. ElectionGuard won't be used for any major elections in 2020, the company said. With so many opportunities to bungle ElectionGuard's rollout, and so few to redeem it, Microsoft is being careful with how it presents the technology.

"We're basically trying to test in a very controlled environment where the outcome of the election is in no way dependent on the technology," Burt said. "We just want to test, 'How does it work? What can we learn? What we need to change and improve?'"

How it works

ElectionGuard works through a process known as "homomorphic encryption," a concept first introduced in 1987 by Josh Benaloh, a Microsoft Research senior cryptographer.

Your vote is meant to be private. Private votes make intimidation or bribery useless, since no one can confirm you voted a certain way.

Microsoft's encryption also keeps the vote secret by converting choices into random lines of code until they're decrypted.

Votes shouldn't be decrypted, however, since they're intended to stay private. Homomorphic encryption allows for counting votes while they remain secret, according to Benaloh.

"It's sort of structured gibberish," the cryptographer said. "Yes, it's gibberish. Yes, you can't tell what it is. But it retains enough structure that you can actually work with it rather than just ungibberishing it."

With ElectionGuard, Benaloh said, only the final tally should be decrypted, not individual votes.

At Microsoft's demo for its new system, R.C. Carter, the company's director of strategic projects, explained that ElectionGuard would run parallel to paper ballots.

After a vote is cast on the touchscreen, the digital vote is encrypted and tallied. The vote would also be printed out, verified by the voter, then placed in a ballot box next to it. The printout would come with two sheets of paper: one for the ballot box, and the other, which bears your votes and a QR code, to serve as a receipt to verify your vote later online.

ElectionGuard ballot

Once you vote, two pieces of paper are printed out – one to put in the ballot box, and one to take as a receipt to validate your vote after the polls have closed. Alfred Ng / CNET

Election officials count the paper ballots, the usual and most secure method. The counted paper ballots are the election results, not those submitted digitally. The count takes place offline, after the polls closed.

Once that happens, the encrypted votes are collected as a .ZIP file that anyone can download and use to verify the votes.

If something didn't match up, a voter could look at the encrypted vote to see if anything had been tampered with.

"If you can't stop the hack, the second-best thing is to know that you've been hacked," Carter said. "This is exactly what this does."

ElectionGuard's obstacles

ElectionGuard addresses many voting machine security concerns. But not all of them.

It's open-source, which means that it's free and can be adapted for any machine. That helps local election officials facing budget issues. It also allows major election machine makers to implement it on their hardware across the board.

Cutting through red tape surrounding election machines, however, is another obstacle.

Different states have different regulations on complying with the Election Assistance Commission, a US agency that develops voting system guidelines. Getting the EAC's certification has become a major challenge for election security, Burt said.

Microsoft found that many election counties were using outdated Windows machines because EAC guidelines required a complete recertification process just to apply simple security patches, for example. Installing an entirely new voting system would be another hurdle for certification, Burt said.

"The process of certifying is incredibly slow and burdensome," Burt said. "What it really is going to require is a refresh of devices in the market. You can't take some old Windows 7 voting machine and download ElectionGuard and stick it in."

Another human error concern that Microsoft will have to address is that people tend to fail at verifying their own votes, or even reporting it when there's something wrong.

In a study from the University of Michigan published in January, researchers found that only 6.6% of 241 voters in a mock election told poll workers there was an issue, despite all the machines being rigged to show errors on the printed-out vote. Without any intervention, only 40% of the voters actually reported the issue to the voting officials, the study found.

And even if it were reported, election security experts don't expect much recourse over detected errors.

"Being able to verify something is not a remedy if there's no recourse," said Harri Hursti, an election security expert and co-founder of Defcon's Voter Hacking Village. "Most people don't want to do things twice. It's just human nature and human behavior."

Microsoft is hoping to address the nonreporting issue by training the poll workers in Wisconsin to prompt voters to check their ballots once they've been cast. In Wisconsin, poll workers have to sign ballots before they're cast, and that's when they'll also tell voters to verify their vote.

The University of Michigan study found that reporting errors jumped from 6.6% to 85.7% when poll workers encouraged people to check their vote.

"Being able to verify something is not a remedy if there's no recourse. Most people don't want to do things twice. It's just human nature and human behavior."

Harri Hursti, election security expert

During tests with election volunteers, Microsoft found that small adjustments like changing the color on printouts could also be effective.

"One simple thing we've done that already looks like it's working super well in Wisconsin is the ballot comes out white, the verification code is going to be printed on a piece of yellow paper, just so you have that visual difference," Burt said, referring to test runs conducted last week with election volunteers.

Human error isn't the only concern for ElectionGuard. Microsoft has put the system through a bug bounty program. It also invited NCC Group, a security research firm, to do an independent review of the software last September.

Researchers have submitted bug bounties on ElectionGuard for review, though Microsoft has yet to make any payouts, Carter said. Microsoft is also working to change ElectionGuard's core programming language from C, after NCC Group pointed to vulnerability issues.

If, then

If all goes well, Microsoft and ElectionGuard could change the way votes are counted and verified around the world, introducing a new layer of security to protect democracies. The company is considering possibilities of what could go wrong and carefully rolling out ElectionGuard in pilot tests in smaller elections over the next year. But other adopters might not be so cautious.

As an open-source tool, it's available to the world, and a public failure something like the Iowa caucuses app debacle could tarnish ElectionGuard's image even if Microsoft had nothing to do with it.

"You've put your finger on a valid concern. I won't deny it," Microsoft's Benaloh said. "There is risk there. There is some subtlety to how to use it properly."

Burt said that governments around the world have been interested in using ElectionGuard, some for countrywide elections.

"We just heard from a developer in a European country who's been contracted to build the ElectionGuard system for city elections," Burt said. "And we had no idea they were doing that. That's the nature of open-source projects. You put stuff up there and say, 'It's here for anyone to use.'"

Prototype voting machine from Galois

Galois' prototype voting machine wasn't available for hackers to test at Defcon. Alfred Ng / CNET

Election machines that go perfectly right in testing and demonstrations might experience issues when used in the real world. That's whatGalois, a government contractor, learned when it brought DARPA's $10 million voting machine to Defcon to see if hackers could find issues with its security. An unexpected bug prevented the machine from working until the last day.

Microsoft worked with Galois to help develop ElectionGuard's software as well. Joey Dodds, a research engineer at Galois, said the open-source tool is still very much in a testing phase and he doesn't expect it to be used in an actual election with major consequences until 2024 at the earliest.

He acknowledged that ElectionGuard is solving for a small part of election security, and that hackers still have many ways to meddle with democracies.

"It is not a complete solution for electronic voting without a backup," Dodds said. "It is not going to have anything to say about poll books, voter registration, anything that happens prior to ballot recording and casting. That's all going to require different approaches."

Even if the technology behind Microsoft's ElectionGuard was perfect, it would have to deal with motivated disinformation campaigns mixed with human error from all sides – voters, poll workers and third-party developers using the open-source tools.

"There are still plenty of opportunities to screw it up, but ElectionGuard gives you a framework to work forward," said Tod Beardsley, director of research at security firm Rapid7. "We'll see if it's actually implemented right."

https://www.cnet.com/features/this-could-be-microsofts-most-important-product-in-2020-if-it-works/

>>13593065, >>13593080, >>13593086, >>13593091, >>13593094 ElectionGuard isn't designed to make voting machines safe from hackers BUN

>>13592974

Fine

1/2

What is ElectionGuard?=

Alex Thornton

Mar 27, 2020

Every election year, millions of Americans are eligible to cast their ballots to elect officials ranging from members of school boards to the President of the United States. Those millions of voters need to be confident that the democratic process is carried out without interference.

However, in recent years, technology designed to help elections run smoothly has been targeted by those seeking to influence, subvert or sabotage democracy.

That’s why Microsoft has been working with governments, NGOs, academics and industry on the Defending Democracy Program. One of the key components is ElectionGuard.

[Read more: Another step in testingElectionGuard]

What doesElectionGuarddo?

ElectionGuardis a way of checking election results are accurate, and that votes have not been altered, suppressed or tampered with in any way. Individual voters can see that their vote has been accurately recorded, and their choice has been correctly added to the final tally. Anyone who wishes to monitor the election can check all votes have been correctly tallied to produce an accurate and fair result.

Why do we need it?

There is overwhelming evidence that attempts have been made to target digital election infrastructure. For example, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, actors sponsored by the Russian state infiltrated voter registration databases as part of a wider campaign of election interference. Fortunately, there is no evidence of any successful tampering with actual votes.

But, as Josh Benaloh, Senior Principal Cryptographer at Microsoft Research, explains, vote casting and tabulation systems are extremely vulnerable. “The challenge is asymmetric. In the U.S., elections are run locally – mostly by counties, sometimes even by townships – yet the attackers can be nation states. It’s simply not reasonable to expect a small county government can withstand an attack from a nation-state attacker.”

How does it work?

Because attacks cannot always be prevented, it is vital that they are detected, so that voters know if the result can be trusted. That requires stringent auditing.

Election monitors carry out spot checks on individual ballots in what is known as risk-limiting audits. ButElectionGuardallows for a much more comprehensive – and public – audit, by providing end-to-end verifiability.

Each vote is encrypted and given a unique identifier. The voter is given a tracking code that lets them check that their vote goes through the system unchanged and ends up in the final tally.

Not every voter needs to track their ballot to ensure the system maintains its integrity. In fact, if just 1% of voters nationally check that their ballots are correctly encrypted and tallied, it would be almost impossible for anyone to tamper with more than 100 votes out of 100 million without being caught.

At the same time, the way the encrypted votes are tallied can be checked by anyone to make sure that each candidate gets the correct number of votes.

Will anyone be able to see who I have voted for?

No. The principle of secret ballots means that not only should each person’s vote be private, it must be private, so that votes cannot be bought, sold or coerced.

2/2

ElectionGuarduses something called homomorphic encryption to ensure that nobody can tell how a person voted. In fact, even the voter cannot use the tracking code to prove to anyone else how they voted – they will only be able to prove that their vote wasn’t changed.

It is also possible to add up encrypted data so that only the final tally can be decrypted. This means that people can check the final tallies without seeing any information about the individual votes.

Will it change the way elections have to be run?

No. ElectionGuard is designed to work with current voting systems, and Microsoft has been working alongside manufacturers and vendors to incorporate it into existing infrastructure (although it won’t be available for the Presidential election in November, and won’t be widely deployed for some time). Paper ballots can be scanned and voting machines used as they are now. The only difference voters will see is the unique tracking code they are given at the end, which they can choose to use or throw in the trash.

Spot checks and administrative audits can be carried out by the members of the existing canvassing boards who currently decide on whether ballots are eligible or spoiled, with built-in safeguards to make sure no individual can either disrupt or influence the verification process.

[Read more: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting]

How can we trust it?

The fundamental principle behindElectionGuardis that it gives the power to check whether elections are valid to individuals. Every single voter has the ability to verify their own vote – most likely on public websites set up by election boards or local authorities. And anyone can use a verification program to check the final tallies.

Nobody has to just take Microsoft’s word for it – or anyone else’s for that matter. ElectionGuard is a set of open source software components that can be accessed here. Anyone with the programming skills can create their own verification tool. In practice, this means every political party, candidate, news organization or pressure group can run their own checks and make their preferred program publicly available for others.

The first pilot has already been successfully carried out in an election in Fulton, Wisconsin.

Is this just a way of Microsoft making money off elections?

ElectionGuard is not a for-profit enterprise, and Microsoft will make no money from it. The technology is being developed and piloted with multiple stakeholders, and is freely available to anyone who wishes to use it, whether in the U.S. or in democracies around the world.

https://news.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/03/27/what-is-electionguard/

ElectionGuard available today to enable secure, verifiable voting, Smartmatic

Sep 24, 2019 | Tom Burt - Corporate Vice President, Customer Security & Trust

In May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announcedElectionGuard, a free open-source software development kit (SDK) from our Defending Democracy Program.ElectionGuardis accessible by design and will make voting more secure, verifiable and efficient anywhere it’s used in the United States or in democratic nations around the world. Today we’re announcing thatElectionGuardis now available on GitHub so that major election technology suppliers can begin integratingElectionGuardinto their voting systems.

TheElectionGuardresources available on GitHub today extend across four GitHub repositories, or storage spaces, each described below.

=ElectionGuardspecification. TheElectionGuardspecification includes both “informal” and “formal” road maps for howElectionGuardworks. The informal spec is authored by Dr. Josh Benaloh of Microsoft Research and provides the conceptual and mathematical basis for end-to-end verifiable elections withElectionGuard. The formal spec contains detailed guidance manufacturers will need to incorporateElectionGuardinto their systems, including a full description of the API – which is the way voting systems communicate with theElectionGuardsoftware – and the stages of an end-to-end verifiable election.

Software code. This repository contains the actual source code vendors will use to build theirElectionGuardimplementations. It is written in C, a standard language commonly used by open-source software developers and includes a buildable version of the API. This documentation is also viewable here. This code was built together with our development partner Galois.

Reference verifier and specification. As we announced in May,ElectionGuardenables government entities, news organizations, human rights organizations, or anyone else to build additional verifiers that independently can certify election results have been accurately counted and have not been altered. The resources available on GitHub today include a working verifier as well as the specifications necessary to build your own independent verifier.

Ballot marking device reference implementation. Voting system manufacturers will be free to buildElectionGuardinto their systems in a variety of ways. At the Aspen Security Forum in July, we demonstrated a sample voting system, built with the help of industrial designer Tucker Viemeister, that we believe showcased a great way the features enabled byElectionGuardcan be used in voting systems. The ballot marking device we demonstrated included accessibility features built under the guidance of the Center for Civic Design, authors of the original “Anywhere Ballot,” and incorporated the Xbox Adaptive Controller as an optional device to mark ballots. The ballot marking device open source repository released today includes a variety of tools and visuals necessary to build or augment real-world election systems using the best ofElectionGuard.

These are exciting steps that enable individual voters to confirm their vote was properly counted, and assures those voters using anElectionGuardsystem of the most secure and trustworthy vote in the history of the U.S. As we’ve previously announced, all major manufacturers of voting systems in the United States are working with us to explore ways to incorporateElectionGuardinto their systems including Clear Ballot, Democracy Live, Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems, HartInterCivic, BPro, MicroVote, Smartmatic and VotingWorks. We’ve worked deeply with many of these companies over the summer to prepare them for today’s SDK release.

Finally, we’ve continued progress toward pilot programs, including work with Columbia University’s Columbia World Projects, that will put voting systems runningElectionGuardin the hands of voters for the 2020 elections or sooner. We look forward to sharing more on these pilots shortly.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/09/24/electionguard-available-today-to-enable-secure-verifiable-voting/

Microsoft pushes open-source software kit ElectionGuard to election agencies, InterCivic voting-tech vendors

MAY 6, 2019 | CYBERSCOOP

Election officials around the U.S. could soon have access to an open-source software development kit from Microsoft that is intended to make voting more secure and transparent.

The software kit, calledElectionGuard, will allow third parties to validate election results and voters to ensure their ballots were correctly counted, according to Microsoft. Each voter would get a unique code to track the encrypted version of his or her vote to confirm that it was not altered.

“It will not be possible to ‘hack’ the vote without detection,” Tom Burt, a Microsoft corporate vice president, asserted in a blog post Monday. He touted the kit’s use of homomorphic encryption, which will allow votes to be counted without decrypting the data, as a feature that will protect votes individually and collectively.

The software, which will be available starting this summer to election agencies and vendors, is meant to supplement, rather than replace, paper ballots. Its code will be posted to GitHub, and can be layered onto existing voting software for added integrity.

The tech giant plans to haveElectionGuardready for piloting in the 2020 elections — a vote that federal, state, and local officials are already preparing to secure. Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray said protecting the 2018 U.S. midterm elections from foreign meddling was a “dress rehearsal for the big show” of the 2020 presidential contest.

Some election security experts welcomed Microsoft’s decision to take the initiative on the issue.

“By providing an open-source method for voters, advocates, and researchers to verify that cast votes have been counted accurately, Microsoft has shown its corporate commitment to bringing trustworthy elections to everyone,” said Maurice Turner, senior technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “I hope that other companies will follow this example and push the technical envelope toward safe and secure elections.”

Aaron Wilson, senior director of election security at the nonprofit Center for Internet Security, said his organization believes “this technology has significant potential to improve the future of voting.”

It will be up to the country’s big election-equipment vendors – Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic – whether to incorporate the new software kit into their systems. Of those three, Microsoft said that ES&S and Hart InterCivic were exploring how to deploy the software. The three companies have been under increasing pressure to take more measures to improve their products for 2020 and beyond.

Steven Sockwell, vice president of marketing for Hart InterCivic, said his company would test through a pilot program with the vendor’s own voting software, Verity.

“Verity would operate the way it currently does but would also support providing individual voters with the codes needed to track and validate their ballot as described in the ElectionGuard program materials,” Sockwell told CyberScoop in an email.

An ES&S spokesperson said the company is “exploring the potential for how this new [software development kit] could be incorporated into ES&S voting systems, and we are excited to see its development and learn more about this emerging technology.”

Kay Stimson, vice president of government affairs at Dominion Voting Systems, said her company is “very interested in learning more about the initiative and being able to review the various prototypes that are being planned, along with hearing more about other federally-supported efforts in the elections space.”

Galois, an Oregon-based systems-engineering company, is helping develop code for ElectionGuard. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has given Galois a $10 million contract to build an open-source voting on secure hardware. Microsoft cast the ElectionGuard initiative as part of that quest for “end-to-end” verification of voting results.

https://www.cyberscoop.com/microsoft-electionguard-software-kit/

Can Microsoft’s ElectionGuard Help The $300 Million Voting System Industry?

At a time when big tech increasingly faces scrutiny for compromising democracy, rather than protecting it, Microsoft MSFT -0.5% wants to restore trust among voters with itsElectionGuardsoftware. It was first tested during an election earlier this year in Fulton, Wisconsin as part of the company’s "Defending Democracy" project. It’s possible this new software could further reduce, and already low amount of voter machine tampering by making voting more modern and equitable for marginalized communities who are most impacted by voter fraud.

The Breakdown You Need To Know: Election season is an exciting time for most Americans, butCultureBanxfound that this time of year also brings voter suppression by way of lost votes, missing records and in some cases, mass confusion. Especially, when you consider the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report from last year that stated Black voters were the single largest demographic target of Russian trolls during the 2016 presidential election. Perhaps this is why only 55.7% of Americans voted in the 2016 election, a 20-year low. Bloomberg reported that voting machines can be compromised with little effort due to minimal governmental regulation. The outlet found that it happened on election day November 5, 2019 in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. Also, it’s a bigger business than most realize, as the machines bring in $300 million in annual revenue.

Microsoft’sElectionGuardfix entails instead of using paper ballots, voters would make their selections on digital tablets. CNN reported the information is then loaded onto plastic cards outfitted with memory chips, and inserted into a card reader that saves the votes to a computer. Last but not least it’s then printed onto a paper copy so that each ballot can be easily placed in a ballot box. Voters are able to log-in after the fact to make sure their vote was accounted for.

The main pros ofElectionGuardinclude a new form of encryption to secure votes and tally them in minutes. The system is not unhackable, in fact it's only designed to make it harder for hackers, by immediately showing the system has obviously been tampered with. Votes themselves are encrypted, so that nobody can see how an individual voted.

Free Election Security?: It’s important to note the biggest problem is finding a way to secure the many parts of the election system, which can vary widely across the country. Different jurisdiction’s throughout the country, often down to the county level, can choose their own voting mechanism. Fortunately, Microsoft’s software code is free and available to the public. The company saidElectionGuardwill work with any voting system.

Another problem with the current voting system is that half of U.S. votes are made on machines manufactured by ES&S, the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the country. They operate in 4,500 localities, 42 states and two U.S. territories. ES&S has managed to maintain control of its dominant market share. Since it often takes more than $1 million to get certified as a voting machine manufacturer, and Pro Publica reported ES&S routinely sues its competitors, innovative new businesses are unlikely to enter the ring. The company told CultureBanx they have “been in many discussions with Microsoft, exploring how to incorporate its technology.”

What’s Next: Microsoft hopes ElectionGuard will be widely adopted by the 2024 presidential election, even though they don’t expect it to be a major revenue driver for the company. They’re also fully aware it won’t be used during this presidential election.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2020/11/03/can-microsofts-electionguard-help-the-300-million-voting-system-industry/?sh=1eb82a1443c4

Microsoft hopes ElectionGuard will be widely adopted by the 2024 presidential election, SHIT!

>>13593257

>>13593333

>>13593363

Scratch your spheres good and proper!

kek

>>13593363

Funny cause its true

KEK

Chuck E. Cheese Oversight Board Decides To Continue To Ban Trump From The Ball Pit

IRVING, TX—In a landmark move being felt around the world, The Chuck E. Cheese Oversight Board has upheld the controversial January decision to ban Trump from using the ball pit.

"We need to be very clear– the world-famous Chuck E. Cheese ball pit is a privilege," said CEO Charles Cheese Jr. "There is room in our ball pit for plenty of kids and colored balls, but there is no room for hate."

After January 6th, several local managers expressed concern that Trump who is a regular at the establishment may try to tell all the kids in the ball pits that the election was rigged and inspire them to start an insurrection at the Capitol. This led to a nationwide ban on Trump or any of his staff from entering the ball pit.

"The losers at Chuck E. Cheese think I care about the ball pit!" Trump responded. "I don't even care. It's a lame place full of losers and their pizza is an absolute disaster. And one time the ski ball gipped my tickets even though I got a top score. Terrible place."

https://babylonbee.com/news/chuck-e-cheese-oversight-board-decides-to-continue-to-ban-trump-from-the-ball-pit

>>13593481

One person can make a difference.

Good Evening, nice time of the day for a golden stroll.

>>13593627

This anon made a meme of it.

KEK

>>13593455

>>13593310

>>13593662

Is there a baker?

>>13592927

Self confirming baker

Baking asap