Computer Scientist Juan Gilbert is on a mission to bring transparency to the voting process
On a spring afternoon, University of Florida computer scientist Juan E. Gilbert, Ph.D., and students in his Computing for Social Good Lab clustered around a glass box. About the size of a microwave, the box held a small Brother printer on a cradle made of yoga blocks. A paper ballot stood upright in the printer, typewriter-style. This is the Transparent Voting Machine. According to Gilbert, it’s the most secure voting technology yet.
“It’s unhackable,” said Gilbert, chair of the UF Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering.
The box has a see-through touchscreen on which voters select a candidate, whose name is then inked on the paper ballot inside. It ensures accuracy and prevents outside tampering by prompting voters to confirm each choice. Another security feature: The machine has no internal hardware, running on a read-only Blu-Ray disc that resets after each use. The paper ballot serves as a receipt for verifying election results if needed.
In November, voters will head to the polls to determine the next U.S. president, with many concerned about the security and integrity of the electoral process. An Associated Press survey found that only 22% of Republicans are highly confident votes in the 2024 election will be counted accurately, compared with 71% of Democrats.
The Transparent Voting Machine is Gilbert’s latest response to these concerns.
Gilbert, a native of Hamilton, Ohio, has been creating secure, accessible voting technology since 2003, beginning with Prime III, a revolutionary open-source software that allows people who can’t see, speak, read or use their hands to vote without the assistance of a poll worker. Prime III, which also powers the Transparent Voting Machine, bridges the divide between able-bodied and disabled voters — what Gilbert saw as a separate-but-equal voting process.
“There are enough voters with a disability that you could change a whole election if you disenfranchise them,” he said. “We created one machine that everyone could vote on, independent of ability or disability — a universal design.”
Producing people-centered technology
This is the hallmark of the technology that Gilbert and his lab create: tackling real-world problems in ways that integrate people, technology, policy and culture. When students were depressed after the death of yet another Black motorist during a routine traffic stop, Gilbert’s comeback was quick: “So let’s do something about it.”
The result was Virtual Traffic Stop, an app that aims to head off tensions by allowing a police officer and motorist to communicate via a smartphone video call before an in-person interaction.
“Dr. Gilbert is very solutions-based,” said Simone Smarr, a Ph.D. candidate who studies ways of making computing more culturally inclusive. “Those conversations end up becoming, what could we do about it? What can we design?”
Gilbert credits his family with instilling in him a desire to give back. His father was a body-shop owner who left school after eighth grade, and his mother, a high school graduate, worked as an aide for hearing-impaired schoolchildren. Last fall, Gilbert’s mother watched online as President Biden draped the National Medal of Technology and Innovation around her son’s shoulders.
“The reason I’m in computing, the reason I’m doing this work, is to benefit society and others — use computing to help other people,” Gilbert said.
Ensuring equal and secure voting for all
You won’t find the Transparent Voting Machine, currently in the prototype phase, at your local polling station this fall. But you will likely find another technology inspired by Gilbert’s work: a ballot marking device.
After the 2000 election debacle in Florida, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act to introduce more electronic voting machines, aiming to speed up the election process and reduce errors. But with voting digitization came concerns about tampering.
Ballot marking devices allow voters to make their selections digitally and print them on a paper ballot. Computers scan and tally the ballots, but the paper records remain in case of an audit.
In the November elections, about 70% of Americans will use paper ballots and ballot-marking devices — a jump from about 50% in 2016, according to the nonprofit organization Verified Voting. But questions about the vulnerability of our voting systems persist.
In 2016, Russian hackers targeted voting software and breached several voter registration databases and a Florida election technology company. Many leading Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen. Intelligence inquiries into both elections produced no evidence that votes were changed. But the question remains: How vulnerable are our voting systems?
When a University of Michigan study found that less than 7% of voters alerted poll workers to votes flipped by a ballot marking device, “that caused a national uproar,” Gilbert said.
In response, Gilbert conducted a pilot study with the Transparent Voting Machine, itself a sophisticated ballot marking device. While 77% of participants showed surprise when the machine printed incorrect names, most neglected to report the errors, reasoning they didn’t matter in a study setting. More than 90% of participants, however, could correctly identify the flipped vote.
“This study showed the Transparent Voting Machine works,” Gilbert said. “We cannot change the outcome of an election by flipping votes undetected. They would notice.”
So strong is Gilbert’s confidence in the machine that he issued a standing invitation to hackers and computer scientists across the country to do their best to break in and corrupt it. So far, no one has accepted the challenge.
Mentoring out-of-the-box thinkers
Gilbert was an early proponent of culturally relevant computing, arguing that who you are shapes how and what you create, innovate or invent. Colleagues scoffed, claiming that computing consists only of bits and bytes.
To Gilbert, the perspectives in his Computing for Social Good Lab are its source of power. “It’s not necessarily that we’re the only people in the space,” Gilbert said. “It’s that we typically have ideas that no one has.”
Lab members pinpoint unsolved or understudied problems, applying their passion and expertise to social issues important to them. One technology in the works is Project Defender, a remote-controlled robot that can disarm a school shooter.
“My job is to train students to be out-of-the-box thinkers,” said Gilbert, the first Black person to earn a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Cincinnati. UF now leads the nation in the number of Black students who earn computer science doctorate degrees, largely due to his decade-long leadership.
One such Ph.D. student is Jean Louis, who has played key roles in the development of the Transparent Voting Machine and tele-voting technology. “I didn’t see people who looked like me doing a Ph.D. in computer science” before meeting Gilbert and his lab members, said Louis, a first-generation college student. He views Gilbert as a role model and hopes to become a research professor, “providing that pathway for those other students that may not have thought it was possible but, given the chance, would excel.”
‘It doesn’t happen overnight’
Gilbert prepares his students for setbacks, which he views as essential components of the invention process, and reminds them that progress is often slow and halting. Getting Transparent Voting Machines and Prime III into U.S. polling locations on a large scale requires buy-in from vendors, three of which dominate 90% of the voting technology market. And while the UF Police Department has the Virtual Traffic Stop app, it’s not in use. Gilbert remains undeterred.
“We see a way to save lives, so it’s worth fighting for,” he said. “It’s just not easy, convincing people, even when it’s to their benefit.”
Gilbert is also pioneering tele-voting, a secure way to vote online with a one-way webcam that enables voters to mark and print their paper ballot remotely at a local polling location. This technology could make voting more accessible for members of the military, people with disabilities and anyone else who cannot readily travel. “People have died for the right to vote,” Gilbert said. “We have shaped voting in this country. It doesn’t happen overnight. But we are making a difference.”
An Investment in Democracy
By Natalie VanHoose (BA ’06)
Published in Florida Gator magazine