The Iowa Democratic Party hurt itself by providing so few details about
the app before the election. It wouldn’t say who wrote the code or what
tests were performed to make sure it was secure. The New York Times
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called Shadow Inc., a name that will no doubt delight right-wing media
for months.By pursuing “security through obscurity,” the Iowa Democratic Party
exposed itself to a massive technical failure at best and huge security
vulnerability at worst.Ironically, the botched app rollout shows the importance of keeping a
paper ballot system.There’s no evidence that this debacle was caused by outside actors—
Iowa democrats did this to themselves. But the fact remains that our
election system is under attack. The FBI, DHS, and national intelligence
agencies all agree the Russians targeted the US election in 2016 and are
still targeting us today. And there’s no reason to think Russia is alone in
LWVH̆RUWV:H¶YHKDGWKUHH\HDUVWRSUHSDUHIRUWKHHOHFWLRQDQGLQ
LWV¿UVWVWDWHZLGHWHVWZH¶YHIDLOHGVSHFWDFXODUO\The US needs to build a new election infrastructure that’s publicly
scrutinized, beta-tested, and above all, trustworthy. We could have
started that process after the 2016 election, but we chose not to. The
future of our elections will undoubtedly be digital, but the present
clearly isn’t.[email protected]D
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