Towards Trustworthy e-Voting: An Open Source Approach?
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Panel Summary
The troubles with voting machines produced by the private sector are well documented. One significant cause is that today's systems amount to "black box" voting compelled by necessary private sector business interests. In an increasingly digital democracy the use of computers seems unavoidable. Can open source methods to develop trustworthy hardware and software help us move toward "glass box" voting? This Panel examines the viability of this approach and what would be required for adoption.
Detailed Description
There is a growing belief that to restore trust in elections requires a combination three efforts: [a] properly engineering the required assurance, reliability, security, and trust into voting machinery without regard to "returns on investment" or "shareholder instrument;" [b] using open source methods to ensure transparency, self-sustaining audit loops, and public examination; and [c] placing the results in the public trust, making them freely available for any government or vendor to adopt and use to produce production equipment.
There are questions about [a] the viability of this approach, [b] whether and to what extent open source can properly address all of the issues of assurance, trust, and security; and [c] the likelihood of wide spread adoption of the results. Therefore, we believe the concept of open source voting technology should be publicly discussed, explored, and vetted.
The Panelists
Greg Miller and E. John Sebes, co-moderators
Greg Miller is co-director of the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation. His varied career in the tech business has been as technologist, lawyer, entrepreneur, executive, venture advisor, and public policy contributor. At OSDV, Greg is responsible for development, marketing, outreach, and program management.
John Sebes is co-director and chief technology officer of OSDV. He has worked in information technology business for over 25 years as a software developer, program manager, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and information security consultant. At OSDV, John sets the agenda for technical work, and occasionally gets to do some himself.
Rebecca Mercuri
Rebecca Mercuri is well-established as one of the leading international experts on electronic balloting and vote tabulation. With two decades of research, over 20 technical papers, and a doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science on this subject, her opinions have been sought by equipment manufacturers, candidates involved in recounts (most notably for Bush v. Gore), federal organizations (such as the House Science Committee, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the U.K. Cabinet's Office of the e-Envoy), as well as numerous state and local legislative bodies.
She has been quoted in the U.S. Congressional Record, on the floor of the Irish Parliament, and frequently by the media (including the BBC, NPR, NBC, ABC and CNN, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Economist). Following fellowships (during 2003-2005) at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the Radcliffe Institute, Dr. Mercuri returned to the consulting company she founded, Notable Software, Inc. <www.notablesoftware.com>, where she and her forensic team perform computer-related investigations and provide expert witness services on a wide range of civil, municipal and criminal cases.
Jeremy Epstein
Jeremy Epstein runs the security group for Software AG. Electronic voting is a hobby that threatens to overtake his life. In recent years he's served on two Virginia legislative panels investigating what the Commonwealth should be doing, co-founded Virginia Verified Voting (a lobbying group for safer electronic voting), been an expert reviewer for the nationally recognized Brennan Report, consulted to the Attorney General of Kentucky, and was the expert witness for voting technology in a case against the State of Maryland. He recently published an article in IEEE Computer on how electronic voting machines work. Jeremy has been involved in security research, development, and analysis for 20 years. He holds a BS in Computer Science from New Mexico Tech, an MS in Computer Sciences from Purdue University, and an ABD in Information Security from George Mason University.
Lesley D. Mara
Lesley Mara has served as Deputy Secretary of the State since January, 2006. As Deputy, she is responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations of the Secretary of the Stateâs office, including its elections and commercial recordings divisions.
Prior to joining the Secretary of the Stateâs office, Attorney Mara served as the first Superintendent of the Connecticut Juvenile Training School, Connecticutâs single correctional facility for youth in Middletown. She was responsible for aspects of planning for the opening of that new facility, including budget preparation, staffing, equipment, program development and training.
Between 1995 and 2000, Attorney Mara served as national Executive Director of Lawyers for Children America (LFCA), a non-profit legal program chaired by Zoë Baird. LFCA leverages pro bono services from major law firms and corporate legal departments to provide advocacy for abused and neglected children and to teach conflict resolution and mediation skills in schools. Under Maraâs leadership, Lawyers for Children established programs in Hartford, Miami and Washington, D.C. and when she left Lawyers for Children, the program leveraged more than $1.4 million in pro bono services on behalf of the most vulnerable children.
From 1990 until 1995, Attorney Mara worked at The Department of Children and Families, first as in-house counsel to the Commissioner and then as Deputy Commissioner for Administrative Services. As Deputy Commissioner, she assumed day-to-day responsibility for approximately 200 staff in the fiscal services, engineering, quality assurance and Consent Decree implementation divisions.
Douglas A. Kellner
Douglas A. Kellner has served as Co-Chair of the New York State Board of Elections since 2005 and was a commissioner on the New York City Board of Elections from 1993 to 2005.
Commissioner Kellner has been an outspoken advocate for improving the voting process in New York while insisting on transparency, verifiability, accuracy and uniformity in voting procedures. When he was first appointed to the New York City Board, he was the very first election official to call for a voter verifiable paper audit trail for electronic voting machines, a principle now enshrined not only in New York law, but in the election codes of a majority of the states throughout the nation. While leading the opposition to unverifiable electronic machines, Doug was instrumental in promoting new technology for scanning absentee and provisional ballots. He drafted model procedures to open the process of canvassing ballots to public scrutiny and convinced his fellow commissioners to adopt rules that provided meaningful due process in ballot challenges.
Commissioner Kellner has served as the Chairman of the New York County Lawyers Election Law Committee and is a member of the Election Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He serves on the Advisory Boards of the Accurate Voting Foundation and the Verified Voting Foundation.
