After 19 years of building, tinkering, and testing, he told Undark this spring, he had finally invented “the most secure voting technology ever created.”Gilbert didn’t just want to publish a paper outlining his findings.“And if they hear how it works, they may run away from it.”After nearly two decades in the election space, Gilbert knew he was jumping feet-first into perhaps the most contentious debate over election administration in the United States—what role, if any, touchscreen ballot-marking devices should play in the voting process.Federal law requires polling sites to have at least one voting machine on-site that can serve voters with disabilities, and at least 30 percent of votes were cast on some kind of machine in the 2020 general election, as opposed to a hand-marked ballot.Meanwhile, academic critics like Appel have argued that they are insecure and should be used as infrequently as possible.Amid these concerns about election technology, a handful of innovators—including Gilbert—have searched for a solution that will silence critics: a voting machine that’s easy to use, based in open source software, and significantly more difficult to hack than existing models."