Russian Hacking

Background

Many controversies have surrounded the past US presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, which resulted of Donald Trump being the new president of the United States. One main controversy was focused on the Russian interventions to help US candidate, Donald Trump win the US election.

A Timeline: Russia and President Trump (added by Dr. Suzie)
(This link is missing the graphic, but the timeline is below that).  It starts:

• Trump’s efforts to develop business in Russia date to 1987. In 1996, he applied for his trademark in that country. Discussing ambitions for a Trump hotel in 2007, he declared, “We will be in Moscow at some point.”
• Read here for a complete long list

Secret CIA assessment

The CIA concluded that Russian operations, which included the exposure of thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, were executed to hurt the election performance of Clinton. Trump continues to dismiss the CIA claims.

Also, during the 2016 election, the FBI issued warning to state election officials to be on the lookout for intrusions into their election systems and to take steps to upgrade security measures across the voting process, including voter registration, voter rolls and election-related websites. They issued this flash warning because they detected successful and attempted cyberattacks from Russia. Victims including Arizona, Illinois and both the Democratic and Republican parties. Because of these actions, something needs to be done before the next election.

How do we fix it?

Adida recommends a voting system that experts call end-to-end verification - encrypting the votes with STAR-Vote (Secure, Transparent, Auditable, and Reliable). This method uses a cryptographic system with real and physical voting machines and ballots. Thus, the installment of STAR-Vote would allow the public to verify the vote themselves creating a mousetrap and sharing it with everyone else, according to a county clerk in Texas.

How it works

• Registered voters input their vote on a touchscreen machine. 
• The machine prints their ballot with their choices with a receipt
• Voters feed their printed ballot into a ballot box with a scanner 
• The ballot box reads a barcode on the ballot and confirms to the network that the vote has been cast 

Back end
The input machine encrypts the results, shares the encrypted vote data with all the other voting machines at the polling place, and enters it into a database of all the encrypted votes that will be published online at the end of the election day. After the votes are published, anyone can use a tracking number on their receipt to look up their vote online and confirm that it was registered. The machine can also be challenged to test it and make sure that the vote was counted for the candidate that the voter chose. Once it has been decrypted, the vote doesn’t count anymore and must be redone.