An in-depth look at Microsoft's ElectionGuard voting software, led by cryptographer Josh Benaloh, which aims to check whether election results are accurate
A mathematician's quest to make American elections more trustworthy. — Near the end of last year, I met Josh Benaloh … Tweets: @bradsmi , @tonitwhitley , @tomburt45 , @brennancenter , @ahier , and @ericgeller Tweets: Brad Smith / @bradsmi : Trust is foundational to any democracy. Building trust starts with safe, secure voting systems - and making sure everyone's ballot counts. I recommend reading this @NewYorker report by @SueHalpernVT: https://www.newyorker.com/... Toni Townes-Whitley / @tonitwhitley : Security concerns about voting during #COVID19 have been top of mind for many. I'm proud of the work our #ElectionGuard team has done to provide an end-to-end verifiable election process to help ensure the security & accuracy of our ballots. @NewYorker https://www.newyorker.com/... Tom Burt / @tomburt45 : Fair and safe elections are essential to democracy. Great piece by @SueHalpernVT who braved the Wisconsin snow and more to write about our work to advance election security with #ElectionGuard. @NewYorker https://www.newyorker.com/... @brennancenter : “The best way to confirm that voting machines have not been tampered with is to audit them afterward. If you haven't done that, you are telling voters, ‘Trust us,’ without offering proof that the machine is giving you accurate totals.” https://www.newyorker.com/... Brian Ahier / @ahier : Inside a mathematician's quest to make US ballots secret and secure 🗳 in @NewYorker https://www.newyorker.com/... https://twitter.com/... Eric Geller / @ericgeller : .@suehalpernVT's story about ElectionGuard is a great primer on voting security for people who are new to the subject. I'm really glad it's reaching the New Yorker audience. https://www.newyorker.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Reporting ahead of the 2018 midterms exposed severe vulnerabilities across the US election system, which set up Microsoft's answer: in May 2019 it announced ElectionGuard, an open-source platform for securely handling voting data, with a pilot planned for the 2020 elections. This New Yorker piece lands mid-pilot, profiling the project's leader, cryptographer Josh Benaloh.
The through-line of the surrounding coverage is trust: Brad Smith and Toni Townes-Whitley frame ElectionGuard publicly as about making sure ballots count, at a moment when pandemic-era voting had put security top of mind.
First-order effects
- ElectionGuard gives election officials and auditors a way to verify whether tallied results actually match voters' intent — turning accuracy from a vendor assurance into something that can be checked, and its open-source release lets any jurisdiction or equipment maker adopt it without licensing Microsoft.
Second-order effects
- Closed voting-equipment makers face rising expectations for outside scrutiny — pressure that shows up years later when three major US vendors let researchers stress-test their software and hardware to rebut conspiracy theories.
- Verification becomes a competitive category: Clear Ballot's ballot-checking app, profiled as officials push back on hacking claims, competes in the same space ElectionGuard opened — proving results rather than just producing them.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, election trust shifts structurally from proprietary black boxes toward independently verifiable systems, where open-source cryptography and third-party audits are the baseline vendors must meet rather than an optional add-on.
The trend: US election technology is moving from closed, trust-the-vendor systems to openly verifiable ones, with Microsoft's ElectionGuard and verification-focused challengers racing to define the audit layer.