Indeed, you won the elections, but I won the count.
Anastasio Somoza
President of Nicaragua
June, 17 1977
I. Problem
The U.S. election system faces unprecedented tests. Many of these tests will become visible in the last yard of the voting process—the final step that occurs after other obstacles to voting are overcome, where the will of the voters must be captured and counted. That last yard is where the voter actually has the opportunity to mark and cast a ballot, and where the ballots are collected and counted, and ideally, where the systems that tally our votes are checked to make sure they work as they should.
This is where the intersection of technology and democracy occurs. Challenges to voters’ rights in that last yard derive from problems caused by the deployment and use of inadequate voting systems, and exacerbated by insufficient checks on the accuracy of the outcome.