University Voting Systems Competition

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]

Competitions

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2006/2007 academic year

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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

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References

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  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.
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