Cast to Vote: A Socio-technical Network Analysis of an Election Smartphone Application

Abstract

This article builds a socio-technical dataset and associated network and provides exploratory analysis of a GitHub repository for a smartphone application used by the Elizabeth Warren campaign during the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucuses. It provides insights into the types of technology used by campaigns for tracking primary delegates and the social actors that have potential influence over those technologies. Results suggest that certain nodes in the network have more influence over the election technology and that security risks can manifest through the unique interaction between technical and social network components as supply chain attacks. The work sheds light on implications of how election technology is audited and designed, especially for potential public-facing voting technology. A metric for evaluating socio-technical vulnerability is also proposed.