Why Secure Elections Are Important (feat. Ben Adida)
In this week’s Gula Tech Adventures, Ron Gula sits down with Ben Adida, founder of VotingWorks—a nonprofit, open-source election technology vendor—to talk election security without the hype. We cover how US elections really work end-to-end: paper ballots, scanners, signature verification, mail-in voting, voter ID policies, post-election audits (risk-limiting audits/RLAs), chain of custody, open-source code, and hardware. Ben also digs into common misconceptions, what happened in Georgia 2020 (audits), why .gov sites matter for official info, and why phone/online voting is still a bad security trade-off.
What you’ll learn
How VotingWorks builds modern, open-source voting systems (ballot printing, precinct scanners, accessible ballot-marking devices)
Mail-in voting threat model: signature verification, curing, ballot harvesting vs. coercion, duplicate registration across states
Why paper ballots + risk-limiting audits (RLA) are the strongest defense against tampering
The role of ERIC (interstate voter roll checks) and .gov domains for trustworthy info
Election day operations: precinct workers, logs, closing tapes, evidence trails
Why mobile/online voting breaks ballot secrecy and end-to-end verifiability
New VVSG 2.0 federal guidelines and why states are refreshing 2005-era systems
https://www.voting.works/
00:00 Introduction
00:40 Election Security Focus
01:19 Voting Works Journey
03:44 Modern Voting System
04:10 New Hampshire Project
06:00 Mail-in Voting Concerns
11:40 Interstate Voting Issues
23:05 Voting Audits
32:52 Disinformation Threats
39:40 Phone Voting Debate
51:31 Conclusion
#RonGula #Cybersecurity #Cynfeld #GulaTechAdventures #AI #CyberComedy