Microsoft executives gathered in Fulton, Wisconsin to witness the first official test of the company's new ElectionGuard software. The voting software developed by the US tech giant as part of its ambitious Defending Democracy project.
Voters in Fulton arrived to cast their ballots for a local election last week. Unlike previous elections, however, voters now cast their choices using digital tablets. The system also involves the use of cards with memory chips and other devices that print out paper copies of votes that are then placed in a ballot box.
According to Microsoft, the system uses a new form of encryption that is very difficult to forcefully access. The voting system also allows votes to be cast and tallies within minutes. Microsoft also added several measures to quickly detect if the system is tampered with.
The tempering and hacking of voting systems have become a top priority for the US government as well as for voters, particularly after cybersecurity experts had found out that Russia may have interfered in the 2016 presidential elections. Last week, security officials told lawmakers that Russia could be launching a new plan to interfere with the upcoming 2020 elections, with the intent of helping US President Donald Trump gets reelected.
Microsoft stated that it doesn't expect its new software to be used during the upcoming 2020 elections. However, if the technology does prove to be successful, the software could be widely adopted during future elections. Microsoft revealed that it had made its software's code available to the public, with the intention of garnering feedback and hopefully letting the public help in improving its code.
Microsoft's corporate vice president for consumer security and trust, Tom Burt, told reporters that since the foreign meddling of the the previous election, Microsoft decided that it was its responsibility as a global tech leader to contribute in trying to find a solution to ensure the safety and security of the country's elections.
The Washington-based company acknowledged that it was impossible for it to create a truly un-hackable voting system, but that is really not the goal of its ElectionGuard software. The company stated that its software was designed to be "tamper-evident."
Nevertheless, Microsoft has worked hard in creating a new encryption system that makes it hard for hackers to change casted votes. The company's so-called homomorphic encryption" is applied to every vote cast and hackers would need to decrypt votes individually if they want to make significant changes to the tally. A separate verifier application is also used when tallying votes. This system checks and detects any possible tampering.
