The Hardest Problem I’ve Ever Seen: Making US Elections More Trustworthy in a World of Untrustworthy Technology

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Presented at ShmooCon 2025 by

Matt Blaze

Automation has become essential for almost every aspect of modern US elections, from voter registration to vote tallying to results reporting, but computers and software are notoriously untrustworthy. How can we make elections trustworthy when the technology we base them on is demonstrably vulnerable to tampering and error? That’s the easy part. The hard part is doing it in an environment where no one trusts the people and institutions, too. This talk will explore the election technology landscape in 2024 America, why it’s impossibly hard, and why we should be optimistic anyway.