The DEF CON Voting Village made headlines for giving hackers access to voting machines and putting election vulnerabilities on full display when it first launched in 2017.
But in the era of the “Big Lie,” the unfounded theory of election rigging in 2020, the village has another — and possibly more challenging — mission.
“Today, the main thing is still the same — tell what are the real vulnerabilities — but fight against conspiracy theories, misinformation, claims of hacks that didn’t happen, claims of weirdness that didn’t happen,” said Harri Hursti, the co-founder of the Voting Village and a pioneer election security researcher.
This year at DEF CON, which wrapped up Sunday in Las Vegas, the Voting Village took place against a backdrop of perhaps the most contentious time for election administrators in decades. Aside from working through COVID-19 modifications, public questioning of election administration has reached fever pitch.
Election offices are, at times, buried in records requests looking to expose fraud. Elections officials in Colorado and Michigan stand accused of giving unauthorized access to voting infrastructure in a quixotic effort to prove the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Election officials from Georgia in June voting village takes election conspiracies disinformation
