The company is working with election machine vendors and local governments to deploy the system in a pilot program for the 2020 election.
July 18, 2019

It's important to note this software doesn't prevent attacks. It provides verification and can help detect attacks, and I'm a little wary if we can count on the makers of Windows to do that. Via NBC News:

ASPEN, Colo. — Microsoft on Wednesday announced that it would give away software designed to improve the security of American voting machines, even as the tech giant said it had tracked 781 cyberattacks by foreign adversaries targeting political organizations so far this election cycle.

The company said it was rolling out the free, open-source software product called ElectionGuard, which it said uses encryption to "enable a new era of secure, verifiable voting." The company is working with election machine vendors and local governments to deploy the system in a pilot program for the 2020 election.

The system uses an encrypted tracking code to allow a voter to verify that his or her vote has been recorded and has not been tampered with, Microsoft said in a blog post.

[...] Edward Perez, an election security expert with the independent Open Source Election Technology Institute, said Microsoft's move signals that voting systems, long a technology backwater, are finally receiving attention from the county's leading technical minds.

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