When Secure Elections Aren’t Enough: Trust, Technology, and Democracy After 2020

Since 2020, U.S. election systems have become more secure. Paper ballots, risk-limiting audits, and stronger coordination among election officials have made large-scale vote tampering extremely difficult. Yet public confidence in elections has continued to decline. This talk argues that the greatest challenge facing election security today is not hacking election infrastructure but undermining public trust in legitimate outcomes. Disinformation campaigns, social media amplification, and increasingly AI-generated content have shifted the threat from attacks on machines to attacks on perception and belief. As a result, election security can no longer be understood as only a technical problem. It is also a social, political, and psychological one. This talk explores how trust is built, how it is manipulated, and why a system can be technically secure while still being perceived as illegitimate. Understanding this tension is essential for protecting democratic institutions in the digital age.

Suzanne Mello-Stark, Ph.D., is a professor of computer science and cybersecurity whose work focuses on election security, digital forensics, and public trust in technology. She has advised the Rhode Island Board of Elections and helped develop Rhode Island’s risk-limiting election audit system, now recognized as a national model for election verification. Her work on voting technology and election integrity has been featured by Vox, NBC Connecticut, and MIT forums. At Rhode Island College, she is a founding leader of the Institute for Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies and co-created the college’s cybersecurity program. She also directed the nationally funded GenCyber program for ten years, helping introduce hundreds of students to cybersecurity education and careers.