Building the People’s Voting System

Tag: secret ballot

Money Shot: What Does a $40M Bet on Scytl Mean?

…not much we think. Yesterday’s news of Microsoft co-founder billionaire Paul Allen’s investing $40M in the Spanish election technology company Scytl is validation that elections remain a backwater of innovation in the digital age. But it is not validation that there is a viable commercial market for voting systems of the size typically attracting venture capitalists; the … Continued

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Doug Jones on the Secret Ballot

[Today I want to share some eloquent writing about the right to a secret ballot. Though Doug Jones’ October 2008 remarks are about an issue that arose a couple years ago, his words remain extremely relevant, especially in the context of the current discussion of e-mail voting. The discussion with Doug started with an issue … Continued

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Tales From Real Life: Judging Absentee Ballots

In another of our Tales From Real Life series, I direct you to Luther Weeks’ account of a day as an absentee ballot moderator, which involves making judgements about whether absentee ballots should be counted, and when (and when not) to rely on the results of counting machines. Perhaps you didn’t know that this volunteer … Continued

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No “Security By Obscurity” for Voting, Please

I have to confess to being appalled by the number of times recently that I have heard people talk about potential benefits of "security by obscurity" for voting systems. It’s one of those bad old ideas that just won’t die: if you hide the inner workings (source code) of a complex device (a voting system), that makes it harder for an adversary to break (hack, steal elections).

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Virginia: Secrets, Lines, and Preventing Coercion

The state of Virginia
looks like a state-full of Election Day trouble spots, to many elections
experts and activists. I agree with one of the main concerns (long lines at the
polls) but I also wanted to share the beneficial flip side of the VA scene,
recalled to me by the eloquent words of colleague Doug Jones of University of Iowa.

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