Stress-Testing Democracy: Election Integrity During a Global Pandemic – Presented by Matt Blaze Wednesday, August 5, 9 AM PT
Blaze holds the McDevitt Chair in Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University. His work focuses on security, privacy, cryptography and scale, especially at the intersection of technology and public policy. In his talk, Blaze will focus on the security of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Technologists have long warned that much of the technology and infrastructure we depend on for voting suffers from exploitable vulnerabilities that could be used to cast doubt on the integrity of elections. Those problems are extremely challenging under normal circumstances, but a global pandemic adds a new dimension to the mix: protecting the health of voters and election workers. Blaze will address how we can securely and robustly scale up safer, broadly accessible voting mechanisms between now and November and will explore the challenges – technological, logistical and political – of keeping our elections running during a crisis.