Abstract: STAR-Vote is a collaboration between a number of academics and the Travis County (Austin), Texas elections office, which currently uses a DRE voting system and previously used an optical scan voting system. STAR-Vote represents a rare opportunity for a variety of sophisticated technologies, such as end-to-end cryptography and risk limiting audits, to be designed into a new voting system, from scratch, with a variety of real world constraints, such as election-day vote centers that must support thousands of ballot styles and run all day in the event of a power failure. STAR-Vote's design is now largely settled and its development will soon begin.

Bio:  Dan S. Wallach is a Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. His research considers a variety of topics in computer security, including electronic voting systems security, where he served as the director of an NSF-funded multi-institution research center, ACCURATE (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections), from 2005-2011. He has also served as a member of the Air Force Science Advisory Board (2011-2015) and the USENIX Association Board of Directors (2011-2013).

Wallach earned his M.A. (1995) and PhD (1999) from Princeton University, advised by Profs. Edward Felten and Andrew Appel. He earned his B.S. EE/CS from the University of California, at Berkeley (1993).