Americans Concerned About Election Security, with Some Looking to Biometric Options: Survey

“… according to nCipher Security, 46 percent of respondents indicated that they felt fingerprint-based authentication could help to enhance security, while 29 percent opted for facial recognition.”

Americans have growing concerns about election security, but a sizeable minority see biometric technology as a potential solution, suggest that results of a survey from Entrust Datacard subsidiary nCipher Security.

Having polled over a thousand American consumers, the company found that a third of respondents said they feel less confident about election security than they did in 2016, and 37 percent indicated that they felt the voting systems in place were antiquated.

As for how to move forward, respondents were divided. Thirty-five percent indicated that they prefer paper ballots, 30 percent wanted electronic voting machines backed by paper ballots, and 30 percent were okay with using electronic machines exclusively. In any case, according to nCipher Security, 46 percent of respondents indicated that they felt fingerprint-based authentication could help to enhance security, while 29 percent opted for facial recognition.

It’s probably no coincidence that these are the modalities most commonly found on smartphones and other mobile devices, with citizens’ familiarity with the technologies potentially making them more comfortable with their use in sensitive applications like voter authentication.

nCipher’s survey didn’t just look at election security, but spanned across questions about data privacy, encryption, and password habits. Regarding the latter, the polling found 28 percent of respondents admitting to using the same password for work and personal logins, suggesting that bad password hygiene is still a serious security vulnerability among Americans. In any case, respondents certainly seem a bit frustrated with password-based authentication, with 74 percent indicating that they find it frustrating to have to login to work applications multiple times in one day.

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February 24, 2020 – by Alex Perala