J. Alex Halderman, professor of computer science and engineering, has been selected as a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. His fellowship will allow him to continue his work in strengthening election cybersecurity with evidence-based elections.
Halderman is one of 32 recipients who will receive a $200,000 to be used toward research in the social sciences and humanities. He says that the grant will support the adoption of securing voting practices in the US, securing elections against interference, and restoring trust in our democratic system.
The move toward evidence-based election can be achieve, according to Halderman, in two steps. “First is ensuring that every vote is recorded on paper and verified by the voter,” Halderman said. “Secondly, we should manually confirm that the set of paper records reflects the same winner as the computer totals. This can be reliably done by auditing a fraction of the paper ballots.”
