What to expect when you’re electing: Talos’ 2020 election security primer

What to expect when you’re electing: Talos’ 2020 election security primer

By Jon Munshaw and Matt Olney. 

After the 2016 General Election, the talk was all around foreign meddling. Rumors swirled that some votes may have been changed or influenced by state-sponsored actors. Sanctions and accusations followed.

Four years later, is the U.S. any more prepared to protect the results of its largest elections? More than you may realize.

In Talos’ latest research paper, we take a deep dive into election security after spending the past four years talking to local, state and national officials, performing our own independent research and even watching one state plan an election in real-time.This paper covers everything from the distribution of funds to improve election security since 2016, how communication has and hasn’t improved between state, local and federal government agencies, and much more.

We’ll cover the basic technical elements of American election architecture, how American political theory complicates the space, how far we’ve come since 2016 and things we still must overcome.

The challenges this year’s election faces are simply different from they were in 2016. Many things have changed — including leadership, technology, voting methods and even more uncertainty coming from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is our hope that this paper will be a primer for the security professional who wishes to help address the challenges American election administrators face.

There is a lot to cover in this paper, but there are two things a helpful researcher must never forget: The first is that every state — and in many states, every county — is different. As we were told early on: “If you’ve se ..

Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.