The cryptography behind electronic voting (and why paper ballots are still essential)

As millions of Americans vote in today’s U.S. midterms, most will use paper ballots, which are protected by strict chain-of-custody protocols and, in some cases, statistical audits. You may wonder why we still use paper for our elections and voting systems when tasks like banking, tax filing, and document signing have moved away from paper-based legacy systems and become fully electronic. The short answer: security. That may come as a surprise to some. After all, cryptography and other security ...