Preserving our American democracy is dependent on free and fair elections. Political corruption and election fraud have been documented back to the mid-19th century. With the advent of new technologies in the face of a national pandemic many more states are looking beyond physical polling places to collect citizens' votes. Is it safe?
Part one of this two-part series covered how elections work, as well as past and present election administration.
Part two explores the history of US elections in crisis moments, cyber-security as it relates to elections, and the potential influence of outside governments on US elections.
Panel moderated by Mike Ritz, Co-Founder, National Leadership Network
Timothy H. Edgar is a former national security and intelligence official, cybersecurity expert, privacy lawyer and civil liberties activist. In 2006, Edgar became the intelligence community’s first deputy for civil liberties, advising the director of national intelligence during the George W. Bush administration. In 2009, after President Barack Obama announced the creation of a new National Security Council position “specifically dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of the American people,” Edgar moved to the White House, where he advised Obama on privacy issues in cybersecurity policy.
Kathleen Hale, PhD, a graduate of Leadership Stark County in 1992, Kathleen is a professor of Political Science at Auburn University where she directs its Election Administration Initiative and Graduate Program in Election Administration. She teaches courses in election administration, qualitative methods, and intergovernmental relations, and her research examines how to improve capacity of government and nonprofit organizations to address public problems. Dr. Hale also directs Auburn’s partnership with the Election Center (National Association of Election Officials) to professionalize the public administration of elections through its national certification program.
Anna Lysyanskaya is a researcher in cryptography, the study of protecting communication and computation against malicious users. The fundamental problems in this area are secure communication, authentication of data, pseudorandomness, and secure multi-party computation. She is famous for her work on anonymous credentials, which are algorithms that allow users to prove that they are authorized without disclosing any additional information.
