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 E. John Sebes Open Source E. John Sebes

Transparency, Open Source, and Paper Ballots

I previously reported that "transparency" was key word for people's positive response to our our recent DC demonstration of our digital voter registration system (DVRS). There is also a similar transparency issue with voting systems, and voting systems also have another transparency issue around paper ballots; and then there is the issue of open source. Here's the how the 3-way connection works.

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E. John Sebes E. John Sebes

The Machineries of Democracy: Failed Trust, Elections in Courts

As you might imagine, it is hard to choose from the manyevents of Election Day 2008 to report and reflect on! But I thought that I’d pick a handful of events that show just how vitally important it is the election equipment be designed carefully – and the consequences of products that aren’t, and vendors that don’t seem to care. I have to say, it’s potentially dire, which is why I’ve picked as many as 3 events to support my claims.

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E. John Sebes E. John Sebes

Early Voting: Reliability and Reluctance

The 2009 U.S. Presidential election is now underway, with early voting having started in many states. And pretty much right off the bat, we’re seeing problems with reliability and reluctance. The story in New Jersey is a familiar one writ large, but the contrast with Texas and Florida shows that often the same concerns-- reliability and trust -- lead to similar reluctance about both using e-voting technology, and about avoiding it. The kicker is the reluctance to avoid it, in Florida – read on.

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Gregory Miller Gregory Miller

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.

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E. John Sebes E. John Sebes

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!

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E. John Sebes E. John Sebes

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."

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