There’s been a lot of anxiety lately about the security of the American balloting infrastructure, but Andrew Appel has been thinking about this question for years. He has research specialties in public policy and security and privacy. He’s a well-known specialist in election technology who is often quoted in the media, and has served as an expert witness on the subject before government committees. He’s famous for having once shown how easy it was to reprogram a popular voting machine to play Pac-Man.

In this episode, he discusses how the pandemic has scrambled the situation for the 2020 general election, and how Americans might feel confident with the result of an election held largely by mail. He talks about which in-person voting machines are more secure than others. And he discusses the perils of Internet voting.