Mike Kiniry

POPULAR SCIENCE | In a contentious election, we can at least agree on one thing: Long polling-place lines are the worst. The Presidential Commission on Election Administration recommends that election officials track those wait times. But, says Daniel Zimmerman, who is Principled Computer Scientist at the election software company Free & Fair, “poll workers are already overworked.” That’s why he created a tech solution to track the crowds: a DIY device called Qubie.

FORTUNE | In Travis County, Texas, an experiment called the STAR Vote project is in progress to upgrade voting equipment, to make it both secure and technologically advanced. There, a county clerk named Dana DeBeauvoir has spearheaded the development of a new system that not only ensures votes aren’t tampered with, but it enables voters to later check that their ballots have been counted. It also lets independent observers tally votes themselves, in case an audit is necessary, all without breaching anyone’s privacy or fear of tampering.

Transparency is a word that holds a great deal of importance to Free & Fair. After all, we develop and give away open source software. Open source software embodies transparency because anyone can review, audit, contribute, and extend it. The decision to open source our technology was an easy one.

REPORTING TEXAS | News reports about cyberattacks on some state voter registration systems and the Democratic National Committee have stirred up concerns about whether hackers could tamper with voting systems on Election Day. Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said her county’s voting machines are secure against tampering, and that the real “hack” is the fear that those incidents have generated about the accuracy of the vote count.

USA TODAY | The impact of Russian hacking on the upcoming presidential election was a topic in Sunday night’s debate, raising the question: Is the U.S. election hackable? Experts say at the national level, no. But there could be individual incidents that undermine faith in the system.

PC WORLD | The question on the mind of many voting security experts is not whether hackers could disrupt a U.S. election. Instead, they wonder how likely an election hack might be and how it might happen. The good news is a hack that changes the outcome of a U.S. presidential election would be difficult, although not impossible.

PC WORLD | With the U.S. presidential election just weeks away, questions about election security continue to dog the nation's voting system. It's too late for election officials to make major improvements, "and there are no resources," said Joe Kiniry, a long-time election security researcher. However, officials can take several steps for upcoming elections, security experts say.

FAST COMPANY | After hackers said to be linked to Russia stole data from voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois earlier this year, the federal Department of Homeland Security offered digital security assistance to state and local election officials around the country.

NEXTGOV | A strong democracy hinges not only on the right to vote but also on trustworthy elections and voting systems. Reports that Russia or others may seek to impact the upcoming U.S. presidential election—most recently, FBI evidence that foreign hackers targeted voter databases in Arizona and Illinois—has brought simmering concerns over the legitimacy of election results to a boil.

MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | This election year we’ve seen foreign hackers infiltrate the Democratic National Committee’s e-mail system as well as voter databases in Arizona and Illinois. These attacks have reinforced what political scientists and technical experts alike have been saying for more than a decade: public elections should stay offline. It’s not yet feasible to build a secure and truly democratic Internet-connected voting system.