The hardware involved in the demos creates a distinctly Microsoft feel — there’s a Surface tablet and Xbox Adaptive Controller, for example, designed to make the physical act of voting straightforward and accessible. But it’s the software that’s key. After a voter casts their ballot, ElectionGuard uses homomorphic encryption to count the vote while keeping the data encrypted, and it gives users a tracking code that can be entered on the web to verify the vote has both been counted and hasn’t been changed.

According to Microsoft, ElectionGuard is being incorporated by all major manufacturers of voting systems, such as Clear Ballot, Democracy Live and VotingWorks, and the company clearly has its eye on major voting events. It says it’s working on a number of pilot programs that will “put voting systems running ElectionGuard in the hands of voters for the 2020 elections or sooner,” and will share more information on these in due course. No doubt there will be a need for cast-iron voting systems come the US elections — it’s well documented that other countries are happy to meddle in politics using cyberattacks, and flawed voting machines will make for an easy target.

After you’ve cast your ballot using either the Surface or the controller, ElectionGuard uses homomorphic encryption to count the vote while keeping the data encrypted. It also offers a tracking code that voters can enter on the web to verify that their vote was both counted and hasn’t been changed. And yes, there will be a paper trail. A separate paper ballot you can mark and place into a box to serve as an extra level of verification.

You won’t see this exact device at a polling place. Microsoft’s open source tech works with other voting systems, and there are partnerships in place with companies that produce more than half of the voting machines the US is currently using. It’s adding support for two voting tech vendors, Clear Ballot and Smartmatic, in the process.

It will take a while for ElectionGuard to ramp up. Microsoft said it was “piloting” the platform in the 2020 US elections. There are certainly incentives to put it in place sooner than later, mind you. Microsoft warned that its AccountGuard system issued 781 notifications of nation-state account attacks (mostly from Russia, Iran and North Korea) since its debut in August 2018, with nearly 10,000 customers learning that they’ve either been targeted or victims. Other countries are eager to meddle with politics using cyberattacks, and vulnerable voting machines could be easy prey.