Like other speakers in the Voting Village, they urged states to use hand-marked paper ballots and to adopt risk-limiting audits.ĭEFCON’s organizers have put the three-year window for hacking voting machines to good use. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, and Verified Voting President Marian Schneider.
Other speakers I got to hear included Sen. My Brennan Center colleague and former Virginia election official Liz Howard spoke about how Virginia switched to paper ballots just in time for the 2017 election. The DEFCON Voting Village also included an impressive roster of speakers. I was only interested in the DEFCON Voting Village, which included a large assortment of voting equipment for participants to test, hack, and break. Barring an extension by the Library of Congress, 2019 is the third and last year these hacks are legal.ĭEFCON is a huge event, and I saw fellow conference-goers all over Las Vegas with their distinctive glowing badges. But the Library of Congress, which has certain authorities under the law, set a three-year window to allow third parties access to voting machines to test their security. Voting machines are protected from reverse engineering under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But what can computer hackers teach us about it? To find out, I went to Las Vegas earlier this month to attend DEFCON 27, the largest annual hacking conference in the United States, knowing this was probably my last chance to see a legal election hacking. Given the extent of foreign interference in the 2016 election, every American should be concerned about election security in 2020. Advance Constitutional Change Show / hide.National Task Force on Democracy Reform & the Rule of Law.Government Targeting of Minority Communities Show / hide.Campaign Finance in the Courts Show / hide.Gerrymandering & Fair Representation Show / hide.Ensure Every American Can Vote Show / hide.