TC:Medium:Collaborative Research: Technological Support for Improving Election Processes

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This project is developing and evaluating the application of iterative process improvement technology to assure the privacy, security, reliability, and trustworthiness of elections, which are the very cornerstone of democracy. The focus of the project is to locate mismatches between existing voting systems and the processes that are currently using them in the conduct of elections. These mismatches can result in vulnerabilities or inaccuracy in elections. This project demonstrates how to remediate such vulnerabilities through the use of iterative process improvement. The methodology uncovers vulnerabilities by modeling processes and examining how discrepancies between the characteristics of these processes and the behaviors of voting systems that are used by the processes can lead to such vulnerabilities. In this way, this project is making a novel and important contribution to defending one of the most critical processes of democracy. The project tests the results on the election processes and systems of Yolo County. Part of the research is to model that county's processes using the process definition language, and examining what these processes require and expect from the voting systems they use. The existing voting systems can then be examined to determine whether they meet the requirements and expectations of the processes using them. Where mismatches occur, the vulnerabilities created by such mismatches can be assessed, improvements suggested, and the methodology can show how the suggested improvements address the mismatches and remove the vulnerabilities.