“Security of Voting Systems,” Thursday, May 29, at 7:30 p.m.
Carleton College, Olin 149 (call the Computer Science Dept., 507-646-4360, for more information)
Ronald L. Rivest, Professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will give the Frank G. and Jean M. Chesley Lecture, “Security of Voting Systems,” Thursday, May 29, at 7:30 p.m., in Olin 149. Rivest is renowned as an outstanding lecturer. His Chesley Lecture focuses on the challenges and innovations in designing voting systems that are secure.
Abstract:
While running an election sounds simple, it is in fact extremely
challenging. Not only are there millions of voters to be
authenticated and millions of votes to be carefully collected,
counted, and stored, there are now millions of “voting machines”
containing millions of lines of code to be evaluated for security
vulnerabilities. Moreover, voting systems have a unique requirement:
the voter must not be given a “receipt” that would allow them to prove
how they voted to someone else—otherwise the voter could be coerced
or bribed into voting a certain way. This lack of receipts makes the
design of secure voting system much more challenging than, say, the
security of banking systems (where receipts are the norm).
We discuss some of the recent trends and innovations in voting
systems, as well as some of the new requirements being placed upon
voting systems in the U.S., and describe some promising directions for
resolving the conflicts inherent in voting system requirements,
including some approaches based on cryptography.
