In the midst of concerns over election security, Microsoft unveils the voting machine software: NPR

Whether it is to register in a polling place on a tablet, to register for the vote by smartphone or to use an electronic voting device, computers are increasingly used in America.

But the technology behind some of these processes is often a black box. Private companies, not state or local governments, develop and manage most software and hardware that ensures the maintenance of democracy. This has prevented journalists, academics and even legislators from expressing themselves with certainty about the security of the elections.

In an effort to improve confidence in the elections, Microsoft announced Monday the release of an open-source software development kit called ElectionGuard, which will use encryption techniques to inform voters of when their vote is counted . This will also allow election officials and third parties to check election results to ensure there is no interference with the results.

"It sounds a lot like the cybersecurity version of a tamper-proof flask," said Tom Burt, vice president of Microsoft's Customer Security and Trust, in an interview with NPR. "Tamper-proof bottles do not prevent piracy of the contents of the bottle, but it makes the task more difficult, and clearly indicates when the change took place."

Developed with the computer company Galois, the kit will be available free for election technology providers to integrate into their voting systems.

Microsoft is working in partnership with a number of voting machine vendors, including the country's largest manufacturer, Election Systems & Software, but it's unclear how far the industry will use the new software in its offerings . The voting machine industry has always been discreet about its security practices.

Galois plans to use the new technology as part of an open source voting system he is designing with a grant from the Department of Defense. This system will not be for sale, says Joe Kiniry, senior scientist at Galois. Instead, it will serve as a model of a secure voting system that private companies can support.

"This gives the ability to check, even if a system is terribly written, even if it's hackable, it's detected," Kiniry said. "This is not magic goblin dust, we need that, more unalterable systems."

The software works in tandem with voting systems that use paper ballots, which many states and counties come back to after more than a decade of using touchscreen voting machines that do not work. have not produced a paper receipt.

An electoral system using Microsoft's ElectionGuard would provide a voter with a unique code that does not reveal who or what they voted for. The code could then be used to track the vote from the moment the voter votes it, after verifying that the selections are correct, until the moment it is counted.

"For voters, the most tangible thing they would see is that they would now have the opportunity to follow the vote as it unfolds throughout the process," he said. said Joe Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Similar to what voters have with parcels, or pizzas, it will be said that it's in this facility, it's been counted."

Microsoft's Mr Burt expects a pilot use of technology in the 2020 elections, but given the time required for certification and the incorporation of new technologies to take a vote, he hopes realistically a "broad deployment" by 2024.

But this deployment will be as large as the tight budgets of local and state governments will allow.

"It will help voters to follow their votes, which will contribute to this audibility, which is sort of the Holy Grail," said Hall. "But this will not reach the smaller jurisdictions that do not have the money to upgrade or have older equipment."