As hacking attempts to undermine our elections have become the new normal, state governments are rushing to secure their voting systems with a $380-million fund from Congress before the midterms.

The big question is, where should they invest that money to protect U.S. elections?

“Almost every state today is using a different electronic election system,” said Alexander Schwarzmann, former director of the Center for Voting Technology Research at the University of Connecticut and current dean of the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences at Augusta University. “While diversity of systems somewhat increases our election security, states can strengthen it by investing in three areas: They should adopt a voter-verified paper ballot system, increase their technological capability to detect and address security vulnerabilities and implement auditing of election results to build public’s confidence in the outcomes.”

Schwarzmann provided technological expertise to the state of Connecticut in cybersecurity and integrity of electronic election systems and led state-wide technological audits of voting systems. He is available to discuss:

• How he helped the state of Connecticut become a leader in voting technology cybersecurity

• How state governments can improve confidence in their voting systems by investing in three areas: voter-verified paper ballots, technology to detect and counter security vulnerabilities and statistical and technological election audits

Schwarzmann is a nationally recognized expert in voting technology cybersecurity and distributed systems. His own research programs have been supported by numerous grants totaling over $8.5 million from the National Science Foundation, including NSF Career Award, Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, state of Connecticut, NSF-NATO, and U.S. Election Assistance Commission and other agencies.

He has authored three books and more than 150 research articles and has edited a number of scholarly volumes on computer science research. He served on several editorial boards, including IEEE Transactions on Computers and Information & Computation, two of the most venerable and prestigious journals in computer science.