University Voting Systems Competition

The University Voting Systems Competition, or VoComp is an annual competition in which teams of students design, implement, and demonstrate open-source election systems.{{cite web |url= http://www.vocomp.org/overview.php|title= Overview|accessdate=2008-08-19 |year= 2006|publisher= University Voting Systems Competition }} The systems are presented to a panel of security expert judges. The winners are awarded a cash prize provided by the sponsors.

{{cite web |url= http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/uncle-sam-wants.html|title= Uncle Sam Wants You: To Build a Better Voting Machine|accessdate=2008-08-19 |last= Zetter|first= Kim |date= July 16, 2007|publisher= Wired}} The competition was started by a group of students and professors from UMBC and George Washington University to inspire better ideas for electronic voting technology and raise student awareness of the political process.

{{cite web |url= http://www.umbc.edu/research/blog/2006/10/university_teams_to_kick_off_v.html|title= University Teams to Kick Off Voting Technology Competition|accessdate=2008-08-19 |last= crose|date= October 31, 2006|publisher= University of Maryland, Baltimore County}}

Competitions

=2006/2007 academic year=

Image:VoComp2007 Judges.jpg

The first competition took place on July 16–19 during the 2006/2007 academic year in Portland, Oregon. The event was sponsored by The National Science Foundation, Election Systems & Software, and Hewlett-Packard Company. The four teams that competed were:

| url= http://www.vocomp.org/teams.php

| title= List of VoComp Teams

| accessdate=2008-08-19 |year= 2006|publisher= University Voting Systems Competition

}}

The judging panel included MIT professor Ron Rivest, Microsoft security researcher Josh Benaloh and John Kelsey of NIST.

The Punchscan team was awarded the "Best-Election System" grand prize and $10,000 from ES&S after uncovering a security flaw in the random number generator in the source code of the runner-up team, Prêt à Voter.{{cite web

| url= http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/us-team-wins-vo.html

| title= US/Canada Team Wins Voting Machine Competition

| accessdate=2008-08-19 |last= Zetter|first= Kim |date= July 19, 2007|publisher= Wired

}}

See also

References

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