University Voting Systems Competition

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The University Voting Systems Competition, or VoComp is an annual competition in which teams of students design, implement, and demonstrate open-source election systems. [1] The systems are presented to a panel of security expert judges. The winners are awarded a cash prize provided by the sponsors. [2] The competition was started by a group of students and professors from UMBC and George Washington University to inspire better ideas for electronic voting technology and raise student awareness of the political process. [3]

Contents

Competitions

2006/2007 academic year

VoComp 2007 Judges. (left to right:) John Kelsey, Doug Jones, Ron Rivest, Eric Lazarus, Josh Benaloh, and Paul Miller VoComp2007 Judges.jpg
VoComp 2007 Judges. (left to right:) John Kelsey, Doug Jones, Ron Rivest, Eric Lazarus, Josh Benaloh, and Paul Miller

The first competition took place on July 16–19 during the 2006/2007 academic year in Portland, Oregon. The event was sponsored by The National Science Foundation, Election Systems & Software, and Hewlett-Packard Company. The four teams that competed were:

The judging panel included MIT professor Ron Rivest, Microsoft security researcher Josh Benaloh and John Kelsey of NIST.

The Punchscan team was awarded the "Best-Election System" grand prize and $10,000 from ES&S after uncovering a security flaw in the random number generator in the source code of the runner-up team, Prêt à Voter. [5]

See also

References

  1. "Overview". University Voting Systems Competition. 2006. Retrieved 2008-08-19.
  2. Zetter, Kim (July 16, 2007). "Uncle Sam Wants You: To Build a Better Voting Machine". Wired . Retrieved 2008-08-19.
  3. crose (October 31, 2006). "University Teams to Kick Off Voting Technology Competition". University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Retrieved 2008-08-19.
  4. "List of VoComp Teams". University Voting Systems Competition. 2006. Retrieved 2008-08-19.
  5. Zetter, Kim (July 19, 2007). "US/Canada Team Wins Voting Machine Competition". Wired . Retrieved 2008-08-19.