UF Engineer Testifies Before U.S. House Committee About Election Security

Juan E. Gilbert, Ph.D., The Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Professor, testified as an expert witness regarding election security during a hearing by the House Administration Committee on Thursday, January 9, 2020. Dr. Gilbert, who has been conducting research on elections for more than 15 years and who was one of two academics asked to testify, shared his expertise in voting system security, accessibility and usability.

Dr. Gilbert, chair of the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, shared with the Committee some key recommendations from the 2018 National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine consensus report titled, “Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy.” He was a member of the committee that authored the report.

“In the academies report, we recommended that we have a national center to do research around [securing elections],” he said. “That is a necessity.”