Abstract
American elections currently run on outdated and vulnerable technology. Computer science researchers have shown that voting machines and other election equipment used in many jurisdictions are plagued by serious security flaws, or even shipped with basic safeguards disabled. Making matters worse, it is unclear whether current law requires election authorities or companies to fix even the most egregious vulnerabilities in their systems, and whether voters have any recourse if they do not.
This Article argues that election law can, does, and should ensure that the right to vote is a right to vote securely. First, it argues that constitutional voting rights doctrines already prohibit election practices that fail to meet a bare minimum threshold of security. But the bare minimum is not enough to protect modern election infrastructure against sophisticated threats. This Article thus proposes new statutory measures to bolster election security beyond the constitutional baseline, with technical provisions designed to change the course of insecure election practices that have become regrettably commonplace, and to standardize best practices drawn from state-of-the-art research on election security.
Recommended Citation
Sunoo Park,
The Right to Vote Securely,
94
U. Colo. L. Rev.
1101
(2023).
Available at:
https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/lawreview/vol94/iss4/5