Coursera offering - "Securing Digital Democracy"
I've been taking the on-line course at coursera.org, "Securing Digital Democracy" given by J Alex Halderman and the University of Michigan.
It started by covering the history of voting technologies (voice, paper, mechanical, electronic) and has been delving in at each step to look at ways to influence/cheat the vote. Week 2 was all about DREs (electronic machines) and hacks with them. Week three is covering voter registration, authentication, physical machine security, and international voting.
I've been taking courses on coursera and each one seems to add something new. In this one, he's using the brilliant idea of using a Google+ hangout to conduct office hours.
Halderman, by the way, was a grad student in 2005 with the Princeton team that reverse engineered the Diebold Accuvote using an anonymously donated machine and was also part of California's Top to Bottom review later on.
It's only a five week course and week three is about to end, but if you're interested, you can still register. Like anything at coursera, it's free. There are a couple of hours of video lectures each week + an online quiz and active forums for class discussion, so you could probably catch up over the weekend. Lectures are both streaming and downloadable, if you want to watch disconnected.
