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.^[1] The systems are presented to a panel of security expert judges. The winners are awarded a cash prize provided by the sponsors.^[2] 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.^[3]

Competitions

2006/2007 academic year

VoComp 2007 Judges. (left to right:) John Kelsey, Doug Jones, Ron Rivest, Eric Lazarus, Josh Benaloh, and Paul Miller

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:

• The Prêt-à-Voter Battle Bus from University of Surrey,
• The Voting Ducks from Wroclaw University of Technology,
• Prime III from Auburn University, and
• Punchscan a team consisting of members from George Washington University, University of Ottawa, and University of Maryland, Baltimore County.^[4]

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.^[5]

See also

• List of computer science awards
• Prêt à Voter
• Punchscan