You should also know that:

- There really are security vulnerabilities in election equipment. Because there are security vulnerabilities in just about every large, complex software-based thing.

- The mere existence of a security vulnerability, in an election system or anything else, is not evidence that it has been exploited

- We should absolutely improve our election infrastructure. But fortunately, there is thus far no evidence that any election outcome has been maliciously altered.

We can make our elections trustworthy in spite of the inevitable security weaknesses in equipment!

How? By using an architecture that *tolerates* security flaws instead of requiring you to eliminate them. This is called "Software Independence", formalized by Ron Rivest (the R in RSA) about 15 years ago.

Ron is giving a talk at the Voting Village this year.

Software Independence is achieved with something called "Risk Limiting Audits", invented by Philip Stark.

Philip is also giving a talk.

Anyway, if you're interested in actually learning about this this stuff - which is interesting and important - and you're coming to DEFCON, come join us at the Voting Village!

https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/VV2025-schedule.pdf