Security News > 2020 > August > America was getting on top of its electronic voting machine security – then suddenly... A wild pandemic appears

Just as America was getting a grip on improving the security of its electronic ballot boxes, the coronavirus pandemic hit, throwing a potential surge in remote voting unexpectedly into the mix, the Black Hat hacking conference was told today.

In his keynote address to the now-virtual infosec confab, Georgetown Professor Matt Blaze said election officials will likely have to deal with a larger-than-normal number of citizens voting by mail, rather than in person, and all that entails, as people are encouraged to socially distance and stay away from crowds to curb the COVID-19 virus outbreak.

The professor pointed out that while some states and towns are well-adapted to voting by mail - Oregon, for example - others are going to face a learning curve in handling such basics as printing enough mail-in ballots.

There's been a lot of noise from the Trump administration about voting by mail and absentee ballots, so here's a primer for those unaware of how it works.

Some states - Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Hawaii - send out ballots in the mail automatically for people to fill in and post back, or drop off at a voting box.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/08/05/blaze_blackhat_keynote/