Research into Trustworthy Voting Systems announced
Thursday 16 October 2008
On September 8 2008, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council approved a grant for the computing department at the University of Surrey. Principal investigator Dr James Heather and Professor Steve Schneider will use the £585,000 grant to research into Trustworthy Voting Systems.
Governments in many parts of the world are investing in electronic voting; however, there are still many aspects which need to be looked at. The researchers hope to develop a new electronic voting system that can be used in large scale elections. They will also conduct user-trials, and create new techniques for the verification of the voting systems. The researchers will be working with the Ministry of Justice, and election systems providers as well as influential US organisations and individuals.
Dr Heather comments, “Making elections tamper-proof is a new and exciting field of enquiry
that will have a major impact on the electoral process both here and overseas."
The research, which is part of a wider £1.46m project with the Universities of Newcastle and Birmingham, will begin in 2009 and finish in 2012.
