The 2020 election cycle is in full swing. Candidates are crisscrossing the country, holding rallies, meeting with voters, and spending millions on staff and advertising – all with more than six months still to go before our first caucus and primary elections. This frenetic activity is taking place alongside efforts by our election officials and operators to maintain a secure election process and defend against foreign interference.
This summer, SICPA participated in conferences hosted by both the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), to help these public officials – who are on the front lines of efforts to secure our elections – think about critical challenges and demonstrate how the private sector can be an effective ally in the effort to further grow public confidence in our election systems.
“As a long-time partner to government, SICPA recognizes that the continued effort to secure our full election cycle against foreign interference requires an ongoing partnership between election officials and the private sector to deploy new technologies to meet new and evolving threats that seek to undermine public trust and confidence in our election outcomes,” said Ken Brown, SICPA Senior Consultant. “One area of continued focus remains the security of voter registry databases. Jurisdictions and voters need to be confident in the integrity of their voter registration databases."
This is especially true in the context of efforts to increase access through automatic voter registration (AVR), as well as early and remote voting. According to Politico, nearly 40 million people voted early in the 2018 midterm election, accounting for a third of the total votes cast in the election. With more and more people choosing to cast ballots without walking into a physical polling place, and with more and more people added to voting rolls through AVR, it’s more important than ever that both prospective voters and election officials have confidence in information about who is eligible to vote.
At the NASS conference, SICPA gave attendees the opportunity to participate in a demonstration of a new registry solution that provides an immutable record with of third-party validation to ensure data and process integrity, while also ensuring data privacy, according to SICPA Product Manager Aditi Jariwala. Building on on immutable blockchain technology, SICPA’s solution allows election officials to reliably track everything that happens within election registries – who, what, where, when, how, enables officials and voters to access independent, third-party verification of voter information and provides real time alerts of unauthorized changes to the data.
“Increased access to voting and more remote and early voting is not in conflict with robust security,” said Brown. “With our solution, SICPA is validating that we can bring more voters into the voting process and in fact provide enhanced security at once.”