How Voting Works

Tina Peters is serving a jail sentence for tampering with voting equipment when she was clerk in Mesa County, Colorado. The situation has become particularly political, but what actually happened in Mesa County, Colorado? In this episode, we cover the technology and the facts. How voting works in a vote-by-mail state like Colorado, what Tina Peters actually did, and what actual election risks her...

Typically, election security experts shy away from engaging with fraud allegations, because the theories are numerous and often lacking in evidence. But it's Christmas time, and you're probably hanging out with family, and surely stories about voting machines and election fraud are bound to come up. You need some cold, hard facts to bring to the table. This is the podcast episode for you...

A special episode of How Voting Works. Last week, I was interviewed by Professor Michael Alvarez. We first met more than 20 years ago when we both worked with the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. Professor Alvarez has a podcast and video series called Election Science Office Hours, and I was his guest. Check out the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJkiWDh7igk And check out Professo...

How do we trust our ballot tabulators? Post-election audits, that's how. Risk-Limiting Audits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit More about Risk-Limiting Audits https://risklimitingaudits.org/ Professor Halderman's analysis of Antrim County 2020 https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity22/presentation/halderman Forensic Audit of Windham, New Hampshire 2020 https://w...

In most democracies other than the United States, voters with disabilities are often required to forgo ballot secrecy in exchange for their right to vote. In the United States, that's considered unacceptable, and in fact it is illegal. This is why we have ballot-marking devices. Sources Can Voters Detect Malicious Manipulation of Ballot Marking Devices? Voter Verification of BMD Ballots Is a...

For a few years in the early 2000s, the US deployed fully electronic voting machines, also known as DREs, fairly broadly. Today, DREs are mostly gone, replaced by voter-verifiable paper ballots. Sources: https://www.wired.com/2004/11/computer-loses-4500-votes/   https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/magazine/election-security-crisis-midterms.html   https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/us/computer-votin...

Let's talk about why we need voting machines in the US, and the specific types of voting machines we use and how they work. The Reality of Full Hand Counts: A Guide for Election Officials , by the Elections Group Harris County voters wade through longest ballot in the state on first day of early voting , October 2022 A Brief Illustrated History of Voting, by Professor Douglas W. Jones THE 200...

Welcome to How Voting Works, a limited series podcast about the mechanics of how we vote in the United States, and in particular about the technology we use to cast our votes. This is Episode 1. The Secret Ballot is the most interesting, profound, and complicated aspect of modern elections. It's also the one requirement that makes everything about elections difficult. References: "One Vo...