Brazil universities attest to safety of new voting machines
Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court stated Thursday (Aug 25) that three universities have released reports attesting to the safety and auditability of the electronic voting system.
The evaluation was conducted by students and professors from the University of São Paulo (USP), the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), and the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE).
The studies were carried out on the source codes of the 2020 model electronic ballot boxes, which will be used for the first time in October’s elections.
According to the court, the institutions were “unanimous and categorical” in attesting to the “safety and auditability” of the system and equipment that make up the voting machine.
USP’s Computer Architecture and Networking Laboratory (LARC), the authorities reported, concluded that the encryption and digital signature techniques are safe, adding that the digital registration of the vote makes sure votes are kept secret.
The students and professors from the Federal University of Pernambuco did not detect any problems in the ballot box programs or any flaws requiring corrections in the new system.
The analysis done by Unicamp concluded that no errors were found that may jeopardize the integrity and reliability of the electronic ballot box.
The models were not tested as part of the public safety test because they were delivered after December 2021, when the schedule was already underway. The suggestion for testing the new equipment was made by the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces.
