News & Insights
We’re Making History in Real Time.
Our timely insights share informed perspectives on the rapidly evolving story of Election Technology, as it unfolds.
Open Source: Good for Business, Innovation … and the Public
In a recent article on Businessweek.com, John Hagel and JohnSeely Brown describe the powerful innovation strategy used by the Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF). MRF is a Silicon Valley nonprofit using an open-source approach to scientific research and drug
Can the Federal Government Help Repair the Election System?
I've said before that one factor in U.S. election complexity is the variety of requirements and practices in the balkanized election system. But people still (rightly!) ask, could the federal government do more to help?
Voter ID and e-voting technology
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling onvoter ID high-lighted one of the many twisted issues in election policy. But combine that twistiness with the use of tech for e-voting, and you get some possibilities that are positively torqued -- and OBTW make another case for open source tech in elections. Here's how.
Is Security the Problem for E-Voting?
One of the most vexing frequent issues in e-voting debates is the idea of security vulnerabilities. I don't think that security is *the* problem with actual e-voting systems, but I do think that in-security concerns are a significant problem with the way many people think about how we do e-voting.
Paper trails, Voter IDs, and election machines
I wanted to call attention to another fine article in the "Freedom to Tinker" blog, this one by Dan Wallach.
Good Q&A on OSDV in "Interviews Online"
Just wanted to point readers to a good interview that Greg and I did today with Interviews Online ... and a big thank you to Dave Witzel for inviting us.
FYI, here is a partial list of questions from the interview. (And if you find any of the answers comment worthy, feel free to comment here.)
How did you get started working on voting systems?
Why "open source"?
Digital Voting Systems — How to Build for Trust
Just back from an excellent (5th) edition of the Freedom to Connect Conference.
I want to tell you about another event next week our CTO will be speaking at descibed below, but first I owe a quick comment about F2C, as the Producer graciously gave us the podium to speak about the OSDV Project, which led to 3 hours of excellent conversation at an evening reception.
House Panel OKs "Voting Paper Trail" Bill
I thought that today's news about e-voting and legislation is notable as an example of the way voting technology and policy interact in our unique U.S. voting system.
First, what was Congress working on? Crafting legislation about elections; one bill to authorize payments to states for efforts to put in place paper ballots or paper audits for the November 2008 election, and another that effectively over-rules 21 states' regulations requiring a voter to have a valid "excuse" to qualify for an absentee ballot (a.k.a. vote by mail).
OSDV Introduced Today at Freedom-To-Connect Conference in D.C.
Good Morning-
I'm blogging live from Silver Spring, MD subway minutes north out of the frenzy that is the epi-center of our federal government, Washington, DC. Today is the start of the Freedom To Connect conference, which is streaming live here today and tomorrow. We're in a fabulous venue.
California de-re-de-certification for voting machine use
There's a pretty regular stream of news about activities in the office of California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, de-certifying or re-certifying voting systems following the results of the state's top-to-bottom review. Rather than making an up to the minute comment, I thought it would be useful to re-visit what I think is one of the more notable past scenes in the on-going drama.
The Audacity of Goal Setting
I had good conversations today, spiced with the reality check of some not so encouraging chats.
The good news is the ratio of supportive conversations to less encouraging chats is running nearly 10:1, so I consider this largely a case of signal-to-noise ratio.
Still, when speaking with supposed "veterans" of successful non-profit endeavors, I'm troubled by the more than occasional meta-message of "lower your expectations, son." (And thanks for the complement of paternal tone, but I'm far older than you can tell by my voice.)
Motivation Behind Adoption
An interesting article appeared Monday in the TechDirt community, keyed by Timothy Lee, discussing a point I've tried to make before and undoubtedly will try to make in the future. This point, nicely discussed by Tim, is about the distinction between e-voting and e-commerce.
Sequoia Warns Princeton's Dr. Felten to Not Analyze Machiine
Nearly unbelievable, but perhaps predictable. The Brad Blog reports on a warning letter that Dr. Ed Felten, Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University has received from Sequoia Voting Systems, should he and a colleague (Andrew Appel) proceed to analyze the Company's AVC Advantage product.
Voters Must Count
ABC News and Facebook are running one of their daily (sometimes hourly) political polls this morning with this question: Is the plan for Michigan Democrats to re-run their primary on June 3 a good idea?
So far its running about 53% to 41% against the idea.
Fortfiying the Team
Tonight, I am pleased to announce that the OSDV Foundation has made a key hire on our senior management team. I want to take a post here to introduce to you our new Chief Operating Officer, Ms. Maureen Davis.
Experience Over Change
Finally, I'm back with a bunch of comments and posts to catch up on. The great news, in another post, is that we've added to our staff which will off load administriva and allow me to spend more time on development and keeping you informed here of our progress.
OSDV Presenting March 6th - "Saving Democracy from Computers: Creating Trust in Next Gen Digital Voting"
I'll be speaking tomorrow, March 6th, at 7pm at this month's meeting of the Cooltech Club. Information about the meeting is here. The title of the talk is: "Saving Democracy from Computers: Creating Trust in Next Gen Digital Voting." Given that over 50 of the club's 300+ members usually attend, and are hard-nosed techie types, I'm expecting to have some good Q&A and report on how e-voting issues look to this little slice of Silicon Valley. Stay tuned!
PRI beats the e-voting dis-trust drum
Today's "The World" broadcast of Public Radio International had a couple of nifty quotes I wanted to share:
"The paper trail is not helpful if the software is not doing what what it should."
"For any electronic voting system to be successful, the voters have to trust the voting machines. In the U.S., that trust simply does not exist."
OSDV Blog Connecting with Technorati
So, we're connecting our blog to Technorati, and this post is to simply establish that link. More later on lots of developments of note.
Cheers
GAM
New York state supports Open Source voting systems
Interesting news: on 27 February, the New York State Board of Elections unanimously adopted a resolution that would provide for waiver of fees for certification testing of open source software. The official announcement says that the Board may elect to waive fees (that a vendor pays for examination of a voting system) if the vendor meets some specific conditions of proof that the system is open source.