American Voter Project: Hacking Digital Elections

Voting is fundamental to democracy, but American trust in “one person one vote” has been compromised in recent years by Electoral College outcomes, allegations of voter suppression and voter fraud, and gerrymandering of Congressional boundaries. Concerns about election hacking will only increase as voting becomes more digitized. This series of events will bring together scholars, politicians, journalists, activists, artists, students, and community members to discuss key issues that influence American voting today.

In the presidential 2016 election, the U.S. faced an unprecedented level and significant escalation of foreign infiltration in the American voting process. And unfortunately, it is predicted to only get worse. As voting technology continues to advance digitally, it is becoming more and more difficult to ensure security and privacy from external threats. These threats have not only affected the accuracy of our elections, but the infiltration of foreign powers has also increased Americans’ level of distrust in elections which has been widely detrimental to the perception of the American voting process.

In response, we hope that this panel will contribute to a constructive discussion on the core issues of hacking digital elections from policy and cybersecurity perspectives. Ultimately, we hope to tackle these issues in order to safeguard our modern republic with election results that are trustworthy, accurate, and just.

Join the Holder Initiative for a student reception (5:00–6:00 p.m.), followed by a panel discussion about hacking digital elections (6:00-7:00 p.m.).

Panelists:
Eric H. Holder Jr. CC'73, LAW'76, 82nd Attorney General of the United States
Malek Ben Salem SEAS'12, Cybersecurity Policy Fellow at New America
Dana DeBeauvoir, Travis County Clerk
Jeannette M. Wing, Professor of Computer Science and Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute

*Panelists subject to change.