Elon University School of Law hosted a virtual conversation on October 19, 2022, with legal experts who explored the debate over voting machine technology and, more broadly, challenges to democratic systems of governance. Professor David S. Levine moderated the event.

About the Program

Since Bush v. Gore, the U.S. has been debating elections and their reliability. Voting machines have been on the front lines of the debate, along with technology more broadly. How can policy makers foster trust in election outcomes? How will technology impact that trust?

Elon Law hosted the conversation with input from Smartmatic, a multinational electronic voting technology firm. The aim: Encourage open discussion of election challenges and how technology, including voting machines but also social media and the internet more generally, influences public perceptions.

Featured Experts

Eric Goldman is associate dean for research, a professor of law, and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law where he also supervises the Privacy Law Certificate program. His research and teaching focuses on Internet law, and he blogs on that topic at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

J. Alex Halderman is a professor of computer science & engineering and director of the Center for Computer Security & Society at the University of Michigan. His research spans security and privacy, with an emphasis on problems that broadly impact society and public policy, and he has twice testified before Congress and serves as co-chair of the State of Michigan’s Election Security Advisory Commission. In 2019, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in support of his efforts to strengthen the technological foundations of American democracy.

Irina D. Manta is a professor of law and the founding director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. Manta’s research spans legal issues involving intellectual property, torts, the internet, privacy, national security, and immigration. A graduate of Yale Law School and Yale University, she also co-hosts the dating podcast “Strangers on the Internet”.

Edwin “Ed” Smith is the director of global services and certification in North America for Smartmatic where he oversees service delivery as well as U.S. federal and state certification.  He also serves as a subject matter expert in areas of system development, process improvement, and product enhancement as well as technical pre-sales across all product lines. Smith currently chairs the Elections Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council organized under the federal critical infrastructure law to facilitate industry-Department of Homeland Security collaboration for the protection of elections infrastructure.

Moderator

Professor David S. Levine is an affiliate scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. From 2014-2017, he was a visiting research collaborator at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy. The founder and host of pioneering radio show Hearsay Culture, Levine is the co-author of Information Law, Governance, and Cybersecurity (West 2019) (with Sharon Sandeen). His work on voting machine technology and information access has been cited and published in leading newspapers and academic journals in the United States and European Union.