Josh Benaloh, Microsoft Research
We have a crisis of confidence in elections today in the U.S. and in many parts of the world. Voters are asked to "trust the process" without being given direct evidence that their votes have been counted correctly. We can do better!
Technology has existed for over four decades that allows voters to independently verify that their votes have been accurately counted – without having to trust any election software, hardware, or personnel. This technology is now mature, practical, easy to use, and has been deployed in public elections.
This talk will describe what it means for an election to be publicly verifiable, provide a high-level view of how these systems work, and reflect on lessons learned from real-world deployments. It will also discuss how individuals can help drive the adoption of verifiable election technology in their own jurisdictions.
Josh Benaloh is the Senior Principal Cryptographer at Microsoft Research and an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. He is an author of the 2018 National Academy of Sciences report "Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy" and has testified before Congress on verifiable election technologies. His work has been featured in publications including The New Yorker and WIRED. Dr. Benaloh holds an S.B. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and M.S., M. Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University. He served seventeen years on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Cryptologic Research and currently serves on the Coordinating Committee of the Election Verification Network which he chaired from 2020-2024. Outside of professional activities, Dr. Benaloh served eight years on and chaired the Citizen Oversight Panel for Sound Transit which is investing $2 billion annually on expanding the public transit infrastructure for the Seattle region. He has also authored numerous puzzles for competitive puzzle-solving events.
