Andrew W. Appel's Studies of Voting Technology

Recent articles on voting:

An Internet Voting System Fatally Flawed in Creative New Ways, by Andrew W. Appel and Philip B. Stark, arXiv:2411.11796, November 2024.

24 for '24: Urgent Recommendations in Law, Media, Politics, and Tech for Fair and Legitimate 2024 U.S. Elections, by the Ad Hoc Committee for 2024 Election Fairness and Legitimacy (Appel, Azari, Cain, et al.), edited by Richard L. Hasen, UCLA Law School, September 2023.

Is Internet Voting Trustworthy? The Science and the Policy Battles, by Andrew W. Appel, University of New Hampshire Law Review, 21 U.N.H. L. Rev. 523 (2023).

Evidence-Based Elections: Create a Meaningful Paper Trail, then Audit, by Andrew W. Appel and Philip B. Stark, Georgetown Law Technology Review, volume 4, pages 523-541, 2020.

Ballot-Marking Devices Cannot Assure the Will of the Voters, by Andrew W. Appel, Richard A. DeMillo, and Philip B. Stark. Election Law Journal, 2020. (Non-paywall version, differs in formatting and pagination; earlier versions appeared on SSRN.)

Fair Elections During a Crisis: Urgent Recommendations in Law, Media, Politics, and Tech to Advance the Legitimacy of, and the Public Confidence in, the November 2020 U.S. Elections,by the Ad Hoc Committee for 2020 Election Fairness and Legitimacy (Appel, Azari, Cain, et al.), edited by Richard L. Hasen, UCI Law School, April 2020.

Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy, by National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine: Lee C. Bollinger, Michael A. McRobbie, Andrew W. Appel, Josh Benaloh, Karen Cook, Dana DeBeauvoir, Moon Duchin, Juan E. Gilbert, Susan L. Graham, Neal Kelley, Kevin J. Kennedy, Nathaniel Persily, Ronald L. Rivest, Charles Stewart III. September 2018.

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2024

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2023

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2022

Five-part series on the Swiss e-voting system:

1. How to Assess an E-voting System
2. How NOT to Assess an E-voting System, by Vanessa Teague
3. How the Swiss Post E-voting system addresses client-side vulnerabilities
4. What the Assessments Say About the Swiss E-voting System
5. Switzerland’s E-voting: The Threat Model

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2021

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2020

1. Ballot-level comparison audits: central-count
2. Ballot-level comparison audits: precinct-count
3. Why we can’t do random selection the other way round in PCOS RLAs
4. Finding a randomly numbered ballot
5. Ballot-level comparison audits: BMD

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2019

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2018

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2016

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2013

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2012

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2011

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2010

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2009

Articles on Freedom-to-Tinker, 2008

  TEDx talk, March 2016

Voting-machine lawsuits

• My introductory lecture for the Debate on Internet Voting sponsored by the Overseas Vote Foundation, March 19, 2010.
• My Freshman Seminar course "Election Machinery" on election administration and voting technology, Fall 2008
• My Freshman Seminar course "Election Machinery" on election administration and voting technology, Fall 2004

Research and Public Service

New Jersey Election Cover-up: During the June 2011 New Jersey primary election, something went wrong in Cumberland County, which uses Sequoia AVC Advantage direct-recording electronic voting computers. I served as an expert witness in the resulting lawsuit. From this I learned several things; see the attached report.

1. New Jersey court-ordered election-security measures have not been effectively implemented.
2. There is a reason to believe that New Jersey election officials have destroyed evidence in a pending court case, perhaps to cover up the noncompliance with these measures or to cover up irregularities in this election. There is enough evidence of a cover-up that a Superior Court judge has referred the matter to the State prosecutor's office.
3. Like any DRE voting machine, the AVC Advantage is vulnerable to software-based vote stealing by replacing the internal vote-counting firmware. That kind of fraud probably did not occur in this case. But even without replacing the internal firmware, the AVC Advantage voting machine is vulnerable to the accidental or deliberate swapping of vote-totals between candidates. It is clear that the machine misreported votes in this election, and both technical and procedural safeguards proved ineffective to fully correct the error.

Security Seals On Voting Machines: A Case Study, by Andrew W. Appel. Accepted for publication, ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), 2011.

Abstract: Tamper-evident seals are used by many states' election officials on voting machines and ballot boxes, either to protect the computer and software from fraudulent modification or to protect paper ballots from fraudulent substitution or stuffing. Physical tamper-indicating seals can usually be easily defeated, given they way they are typically made and used; and the effectiveness of seals depends on the protocol for their application and inspection. The legitimacy of our elections may therefore depend on whether a particular state's use of seals is effective to prevent, deter, or detect election fraud. This paper is a case study of the use of seals on voting machines by the State of New Jersey. I conclude that New Jersey's protocols for the use of tamper-evident seals have been not at all effective. I conclude with a discussion of the more general problem of seals in democratic elections.

Analysis of the AVC Advantage DRE voting machine: In July 2008 I led a team of computer scientists in a study of the software and hardware of the Sequoia AVC Advantage. This is in connection with the NJ voting-machines lawsuit.

Summary article:
The New Jersey Voting-machine Lawsuit and the AVC Advantage DRE Voting Machine, by Andrew W. Appel, Maia Ginsburg, Harri Hursti, Brian W. Kernighan, Christopher D. Richards, Gang Tan, and Penny Venetis.
Published in EVT/WOTE'09, Electronic Voting Technology Workshop / Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, August 2009.

Technical reports:

• Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H DRE Voting Machine
• Security Seals on AVC Advantage Voting Machines are Easily Defeated

6300 beads representing the precincts in a New Jersey Governor election; 10% of the beads are blue, representing fraudulent voting machines. A 1% sample (63 beads) is shown; it is extremely likely to include at least one blue bead (in this case the sample has 7 blue beads), and thus the audit will catch some of the fraudulent machines (triggering, in principle, a wider recount and a forensic investigation).

100 marbles representing the precincts of a city mayoral election; 10% of the marbles are blue representing fraudulent voting machines. A 1% sample is shown (one marble); it's unlikely that a 1% sample will include any blue marbles. While a 1% audit works well for statewide races, it does not suffice for local or legislative-district elections. (Photos: Alex Halderman)

How I bought some used voting machines on the Internet

Related papers:
The Trouble With Triples: A Critical Review of the Triple Ballot (3ballot) scheme, Part 1 by Charlie Strauss, October 5, 2006.
A Critical Review of the Triple Ballot Voting System. Part 2: Cracking the Triple Ballot Encryption by Charlie Strauss, October 8, 2006.

Ceci n'est pas une urne:
On the Internet vote for the
Assemblée des Français de l'Etranger (click here for the report)