Design Artifacts
When we announced the grant program to create a new digital absentee voting system, we set forth principles to guide the development process. In the spirit of our principle of transparency, we released nearly 50 pages of architectural narratives, architecture designs, threat model summaries, and more in November 2021. On April 5, 2022, we released an additional 46 pages of documents including workflow diagrams, design documentation, and documentation on the Benaloh challenge.
We invite you to explore each document and see the progress made during the development of this system.
*Click buttons to download PDF documents
For Press & Other Inquiries:
info@mobilevoting.org
Digital Voting System
Design Release 1
This release is the first of many progressive releases documenting the design and development of the Digital Voting System our grantees are developing. This release chronicles the current state of the project. It specifically outlines how the systems are currently configured, current data flows, and cyber security implications as they stand now. The documents presented are meant to serve as a guide for interested parties to assess the current state of the build, understand broad dataflows and cyber implications, and provide input or ask questions they may have. The current architecture and associated narrative are not indicative of the final product. Data flows and system configurations are subject to change based on future findings and planned optimizations. The proceeding list is not exhaustive.
- Performing useability surveys of the Ballot Checking process and optimizing the user experience.
- Airgapping Trustee key generation processes from the internet.
- Security optimization driven by internal Threat Models, Secure Code Reviews, and Penetration testing.
- Adding printing flexibility by supporting standards external to NIST 1500-100/103.
- Developing a singular administrative interface for election officials during the pre-election phase.
- Responding to the public’s technical input to drive innovation.
We strongly promote the public to assess the architecture, identify concerns, and work with the team during the development process to further strengthen the system. Voting is a public process and we see every legal voter in the US as a stakeholder. If you have any questions please contact the team directly at tech@mobilevoting.org.
Design Release 2
04/05/2022
This release is the second of many progressive releases documenting the design and development of the Digital Voting System our grantees are developing. This release includes documents reflecting the current state of the project. It specifically outlines current data workflows and updates to the design of the system since our release in December. The documents presented are meant to serve as a guide for interested parties to assess the current state of the build, understand broad data flows and cyber implications, and provide input or ask questions they may have. Data flows and system configurations are subject to change based on future findings and planned optimizations. The proceeding list is not exhaustive.
- A review of the Ballot Checking process to mitigate the risk of device malware.
- A technical description and diagram of the adapted Benaloh Challenge Process.
- Visual design documentation for the MarkIt voting application.
- New release of the voter workflow within the voting application.
- New release of Election Official workflow within the MarkIt app provisioner.
We strongly promote the public to assess the architecture, identify concerns, and work with the team during the development process to further strengthen the system. Voting is a public process and we see every legal voter in the US as a stakeholder. If you have any questions please contact the team directly at tech@mobilevoting.org.
*Click buttons to download PDF documents
Design Release 3
07/07/2022
This release is the third of many progressive releases documenting the design and development of the Digital Voting System our grantees are developing. This release includes a white paper describing the design for air gapping the ballot encryption key generation and ballot decryption process. The documents presented are meant to serve as a guide for interested parties to assess the current state of the build, understand broad dataflows and cyber implications, and provide input or ask questions they may have. Data flows and system configurations are subject to change based on future findings and planned optimizations. The proceeding list is not exhaustive.
- A review of the Air-Gapped Trustee Application for Generating Ballot Encryption Keys and Decrypting Cast Ballots
We strongly promote the public to assess the architecture, identify concerns, and work with the team during the development process to further strengthen the system. Voting is a public process and we see every legal voter in the US as a stakeholder. If you have any questions please contact the team directly at tech@mobilevoting.org.
Design Release 5
12/14/2022
This release is the fifth of many progressive releases documenting the design and development of the Digital Voting System our grantees are developing. In this release, we are publishing the updated system architecture diagram and accompanying design narrative.
We invite the public to assess the architecture, identify concerns, and work with the team during the development process to further strengthen the system. Voting is a public process and we see every legal voter in the US as a stakeholder. If you have any questions please contact the team directly at tech@mobilevoting.org.
Design Release 4
10/25/2022
This release is the fourth of many progressive releases documenting the design and development of the Digital Voting System our grantees are developing. In this release, we are publishing a report from a security consultant, Synopsis, which performed an architecture review and risk analysis of the system architecture for the mobile voting system under development. The report was prepared in July and provided our grantees with guidance on the risks in the current architecture and recommendations on how to mitigate those risks. Also included is a set of recommendations from our other security consultant, Vertatec, outlining what steps our grantees are taking to mitigate the risks identified in the Synopsis report. We plan to engage partners to update these assessments, and to assess our claims about election security, and will publish future reports in upcoming disclosures. We also plan to update the system architecture diagrams in the coming weeks and will be publishing an update to those diagrams.
We invite the public to assess the architecture, identify concerns, and work with the team during the development process to further strengthen the system. Voting is a public process and we see every legal voter in the US as a stakeholder. If you have any questions please contact the team directly at tech@mobilevoting.org.