Netgain Challenge

Critical democracy infrastructure is an apt framing for the processes and technology of elections administration, whether such is delivered via the Internet or not. Yet, a great challenge in the digital age is that voting technology remains a backwater of government IT. This is because governments have little budget for the innovations required to ensure elections processes are verifiable, accurate, secure and transparent. Therefore, commercial interests have little incentive to provide such innovations. The result is a critical component of democracy infrastructure remains at risk for compromise. This lowers confidence in elections and their outcomes, reduces participation, and risks the integrity of democracy. It’s imperative that election administration technology be publicly owned, and open source in design, development, and distribution. This is an important challenge well suited to philanthropic solution with several efforts already underway worthy of consideration.