Shaping the Future of Voting with Technology Innovations

Available on-demand

The intersection of Artificial Intelligence, democratic integrity, and election security represents the primary frontier for modern governance. Dr. Juan Gilbert’s pioneering research establishes a strategic benchmark in this space, transitioning from the historically reactive “hanging chad” era toward a proactive technological paradigm. By integrating universal accessibility with architectural security, Dr. Gilbert addresses the critical vulnerabilities that compromise public trust and electoral resilience.

The world is in a transformative era, with AI revolutionizing industries, reshaping innovation, and unlocking opportunities once thought impossible. Its vast potential inspires optimism for a future where technology drives progress across industries, governments, NGOs, and society as a whole. However, with this promise comes significant responsibility. Concerns over bias, inequitable access, safety vulnerabilities, and ethical uncertainties highlight the urgent need for a guiding framework. RISE (Responsible, Inclusive, Safe and Ethical) AI fulfills this role, ensuring that AI technologies are developed and applied responsibly, inclusively, and ethically.

The RISE AI Conference provides a unique platform to explore how artificial intelligence can be harnessed to tackle complex societal and contemporary challenges while upholding the principles of RISE. The inaugural RISE AI Conference took place from October 6-8, 2025 at the University of Notre Dame, and was hosted by the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society.

For more information, please visit the RISE AI Conference website.

During the “Rise AI” keynote at the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Juan Gilbert, a National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureate, outlined a vision for a robust electoral infrastructure. He argued that American election reform is chronically reactive, often lagging behind the crises it seeks to solve. For policy analysts and strategists, Gilbert’s work represents a shift toward intentional, proactive innovation—leveraging “stateless” computing and universal design to mitigate threats before they manifest in a contested election cycle.

The Problem with Legacy Systems

Legacy voting technologies—specifically Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines and traditional optical scanners—remain structurally vulnerable. DREs often lack transparent, physical audit trails, while optical scanners are plagued by human ambiguity. Drawing on real ballots from the 2008 Minnesota election, Dr. Gilbert demonstrated that “stray marks,” such as voters writing “yes” in an oval or circling a candidate’s name, create subjective interpretation hurdles that even advanced AI models struggle to navigate. From a policy perspective, this ambiguity is a liability; it necessitates manual recounts and invites legal challenges that erode institutional trust.

Universal Design via Prime III

The “Prime III” (Premier Third Generation) system serves as a strategic solution through Universal Design. It is a single, “stateless” machine used by every voter, regardless of ability. Running off a bootable, read-only Blu-ray disc, the system lacks a hard drive, ensuring that session data cannot persist or be altered by malware. Beyond accessibility, this universal approach offers a unique security advantage: by forcing every voter onto the same interface, a would-be attacker is denied the ability to target specific sub-groups. To succeed, a hacker must deceive the entire electorate simultaneously, dramatically increasing the risk of detection. Furthermore, the system’s voice-interaction feature—allowing users to speak the word “vote” or blow into a microphone rather than identifying specific names—renders the platform instantly language-independent, a vital win for inclusive policy.

The Transparency Solution

To neutralize the threat of “vote flipping,” Gilbert introduced the “Transparent Interactive Printing Interface.” This design counters the “Hawthorne Effect”—the psychological tendency for study participants to behave differently under observation—which skewed previous research. While landmark studies from the University of Michigan and Rice University showed identification rates of only 6.6% and 17.6% respectively, Gilbert’s interface achieved a 93% identification rate. By requiring voters to physically interact with the printed selection on the screen to confirm their choice, the system empowers the “Power of One.” Strategic security does not require every voter to catch a hack; it only requires one vocal, passionate voter to detect an anomaly and trigger a systemic audit.

The Future of Remote Voting (Tele-voting)

Bridging the gap between convenience and security, Dr. Gilbert demonstrated a “Tele-voting” model. This allows voters to mark a ballot on a remote device, triggering a physical printout at the precinct. Crucially, the voter then receives a scanned image of that physical paper on a separate device (such as a smartphone) to verify the result. This dual-device verification protects against “contamination” attacks. In a contamination scenario, an attacker might not change a vote but instead corrupt the data so it cannot be tallied; a physical, verifiable paper trail remains the only absolute defense against such democratic disruption.

Logistics and Biometrics

The presentation also addressed the “Voter Pass” system for line management. While intuitive, Gilbert noted that some officials resist such queuing models because they reveal the “upper bounds” of a precinct’s capacity. Strategically, this means officials can no longer obscure the mathematical impossibility of serving everyone in a given timeframe. Regarding voter verification, Gilbert proposed facial recognition over fingerprints or iris scans. Because faces are public-facing, they lack the “criminal” connotations of fingerprints or the invasive “permanency” associated with iris scans, making facial biometrics a more socially and politically viable path for future voter ID policy.

The synthesis of these innovations addresses the deep-seated sociopolitical hurdles of trust. To secure the future of the ballot, national initiatives must now move these academic breakthroughs from the lab into standard precinct operations before the next crisis arrives.

Identifying actionable insights from Dr. Gilbert’s keynote is essential for policymakers and technologists aiming to fortify democratic institutions. The following pillars provide a roadmap for intentional reform.

• Defending Against Contamination Attacks: Since there is no known way to fully secure a purely digital ballot, physical paper remains the only audit trail capable of surviving “contamination” attempts intended to prevent a valid tally.

• Architectural Integrity through Statelessness: Shifting toward “stateless” hardware—booting from read-only media without internal storage—represents a paradigm shift in mitigating persistent digital threats and unauthorized software persistence.

• The Strategic “Power of One”: Interface design should focus on maximizing detection by the most vigilant users; a 93% detection rate proves that a transparent interface can turn a single observant voter into a trigger for a full system audit.

• Social Acceptability in Biometrics: Technical efficacy is secondary to public psychology; facial recognition is more viable for voter verification because it avoids the criminal associations of fingerprints and the perceived invasiveness of iris scans.

• Breaking the Reactive Reform Cycle: Innovation in election technology is currently driven by public “pain” rather than proactive strategy; a national innovation initiative is required to decouple progress from catastrophe.

Direct testimony from leaders in election technology provides the necessary authority to build public trust in emerging systems.

• “There is no known way given the current state of technology to secure a digital ballot… I don’t care if you’re encrypted or whatever whatever you can’t secure it.” — Dr. Juan Gilbert

• “People say ‘well what’s the big deal I don’t I don’t get it.’ That’s the response we want. It’s so easy that people think they could have designed it.” — Dr. Juan Gilbert

• “When you do a study… you behave differently than you would in reality. That’s what they were doing… neither Michigan nor Rice accounted for that [the Hawthorne Effect].” — Dr. Juan Gilbert

• “Until you feel pain we don’t have to change… They just won’t move unless there’s a state out there that wants to be on the cutting edge.” — Dr. Juan Gilbert

• “Start with the business realization of AI. Don’t just get into AI for the sake of doing AI unless you can attach it to a real business outcome.” — Nitesh (Host)

In the American electoral landscape, the path to progress has historically been paved by “Innovation through Pain.” To preserve the integrity of our democracy, we must now strive to transcend this cycle through the adoption of proactive, universal, and transparent technology.