Every year, interns from academic institutions around the world apply and grow their knowledge as members of the research community at Microsoft. In this Microsoft Research Podcast series, these students join their internship supervisors to share their experience working alongside some of the leading researchers in their respective fields.

In this episode, PhD students Anunay Kulshrestha and Karan Newatia talk to Senior Cryptographer Josh Benaloh about their work this summer on ElectionGuard, a free, open-source toolkit that enables voters to verify that their votes have been accurately counted. Kulshrestha and Newatia discuss their contributions to extending ElectionGuard to mail-in voting and rank-choice voting, respectively; what is needed for widespread adoption of the verifiable election technology; and why they’d recommend a Microsoft internship to other students.

(Editor’s note: After its design and development by Microsoft, ElectionGuard is now part of the newly formed nonprofit Election Technology Initiative, which will join with Microsoft to further ElectionGuard’s growth and help advance its adoption.)

Learn more

ElectionGuard | Project page
The next frontier in elections: Microsoft supports the Council of State Governments’ Election Technology Initiative | Microsoft On the Issues blog, July 2023
Security and Cryptography | Group page

Intern Insights: Dr. Josh Benaloh with Anunay Kulshrestha and Karan Newatia