Election Tech

Lawmakers are considering laws that would let officials reduce the number of voting machines and put pictures of all ballots online. Others would criminalize deepfake campaign ads and eliminate using ballot QR codes to count votes.

Elections officials have deployed new voting machines at three vote centers to better accommodate people with disabilities, and a way for voters to “cure” or fix signature problems via text message. In-person voting began Monday morning.

In the face of concerns like AI-powered phishing, tensions around discussing misinformation and physical threats, election workers can turn to several organizations aimed at providing them with help.

In the midst of an election year, evolving AI has in part led to a massive spike in deepfake-powered disinformation, but at a recent Brookings event, experts discussed how lawmakers and officials can play defense.

Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil queried Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar on a state website malfunction. The site showed mail-in ballots had been submitted for the presidential primary when they hadn’t.

With questions arising around election trust and security, some experts are proposing that U.S. voting machines shouldn’t use proprietary software, instead moving toward an open source model.

Some voters Tuesday in Tarrant County, Texas, waited in long lines to cast their ballots. The county is working with KNOWiNK, which provides its electronic poll book system, to provide wait times to the public online.

A senior official said that a widespread social media outage on Tuesday appeared to be unrelated to the elections. By the afternoon, the disruption had mostly ended.

Elections officials and law enforcement officers are hashing out how to stop the threat by investigating who is behind the source and issuing correct information to the public.

Deceptive video or audio that uses technology to impersonate candidates would be made illegal under a bill the Georgia House passed Thursday. The House voted 148-22 to approve the legislation.

Lawmakers in the state are rushing to stop malicious computer-generated spoofs ahead of the 2024 presidential election with legislation to criminalize deepfakes and deceptive robocalls.

Federal law enforcement and cybersecurity officials are warning the nation’s state election administrators that they face serious threats ahead of November’s presidential election.

Brookings Institution panelists considered how the proliferation of generative AI tools, weakening of social media platform trust and safety teams, and drawdown in federal communications with social media firms will impact the the 2024 elections.

Election watchers and technology experts say the rise of publicly available artificial intelligence will present a great threat to the ability of voters to separate truth from fiction as a vital election draws closer.

The 17-day trial questioning the security of Georgia’s Dominion voting machines ended Thursday, leaving the final decision in the hands of U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg.

Georgia lawmakers are trying to find ways to criminalize videos that use tech to impersonate candidates, warning that this presidential election could include misleading ads featuring Trump and Biden.

Election officials from 50 counties met with FBI and Homeland Security officials at a National Guard training center, running through scenarios and planning responses to what may happen in 2024.

As disinformation and misinformation spread ahead of the 2024 elections in November, libraries may be one of the few remaining institutions that Americans widely trust.