Building the People’s Voting System

Get Involved

It takes all kinds of people with all kinds of skills to build a voting system like this. Check out the options below to find out how you can help!


PLEASE ADD YOUR NAME!
We need to reinvent our election infrastructure to restore faith in our democracy now.

The 2020 election was as divisive as ever. Yet, regardless of political preference, we can all agree: in order to restore faith in our democracy, we need to rebuild trust in our voting systems.

Confusing count processes, conspiracy theories, flimsy lawsuits, and proprietary software all created an aura of ambiguity and bad-faith that undermined the election results. Finally, a terrifying attack on the capitol that nearly derailed the certification process for a peaceful transfer of power was narrowly averted. How many more close calls can our democracy survive?

The TrustTheVote Project mission is to stop those close calls by producing public election technology for all voting systems – that is as verifiable as it is accurate, and as secure as it is transparent. This is totally do-able.

WE NEED YOUR HELP

Please add your name to our petition to let your state and elected officials know that you demand a more verifiable, secure, easier to use, and totally transparent system for voting in every precinct in America.

Elections to date have proven that the only way to do that is through publicly
owned technology, which the commercial sector has no business incentive to
provide.

Only then can you be confident that your vote was counted correctly, along
with the votes of every other voter across the country.

You can read the full petition here.

THE PETITION

We, the people, hereby respectfully demand that our nation rethink how money is spent on election infrastructure by adopting publicly owned election technology that ensures casting and counting of our ballots is verifiable, accurate, secure and transparent. To do so, Congress must fully support development of public voting technology as one of our nations highest priorities in order to preserve and protect our democracy.

ADD MY NAME

If you “get” the importance of this, then join the Project—that’s right: become a member! It’s a one-time contribution of $24 (seriously, we’re never going to ask you for another dime). The time is now, because this technology needs to be ready for the 2024 election—it’s ambitious, but totally do-able.

We’re building a nationwide membership of one million Americans like you for a one-time contribution of $24 each, so the Project will have all of the funding necessary to complete ElectOS, have it certified, and evangelize its adoption. We call it “#24For24” and it starts with you.

Once you’re a member, you’ll have your name memorialized in the software source code base—an original copy, which will be stored in the U.S. National Archives. Seriously. Awesome, right?
But that’s not all.

As a part of the team (and you don’t even need to know how to write software), you will have opportunities to:

  • Join a private social media group to converse with other team members, sign-up for design review sessions, and most important provide comments and feedback.
  • Exclusive access to talk directly with the key architects, engineers and developers during their office hours.
  • Witness development sessions; participate in status meetings; and monitor weekly updates on progress.
  • Serve as a test user of elements that voters will ultimately use—such as services to request absentee ballots, update registration, and even for those needing or wanting to, testing ballot marking tools that allow you to make your choices and print out an official ballot for casting.
  • Obtain exclusive gear to show your support for a publicly owned election and voting system that will help us trust the vote.
  • Become a part of a well-documented history of the most unique digital public works project in history.

One of the best ways to spread the word to friends and family about the TrustTheVote Project is to comment on our postings and share that with others. We get a number of great suggestions from thoughtful comments in social media, eMail, comment forms, and surveys.

True story: One reader asked if we could capture anonymous “swipe data” (the track of a finger across the tablet) of a user session to verify the voter intent in comparison to the printed ballot. This turned out to be a brilliant idea for auditing and verifying the system is working correctly. It’s a perfect example of crowd wisdom in building public technology.

Here are some links to stay up with our activities; please follow and share:

  • The OSET Institute (our sponsoring organization) Blog.
  • Our own TrustTheVote Project Blog.
  • The OSET Institute Twitter Feed (quite popular).
  • Our own TrustTheVote Project Twitter Feed (please help us grow this community!)
  • The OSET Institute’s research papers page (you can read and comment).
  • The OSET Institute’s media page (if you see an interesting article, please share!)

Beyond basic membership, if you are interested in going a step further in getting involved we want to hear from you. This link will take you to our Volunteer and Engagement page.

We’re on the lookout for talent—not only technologists (designers, engineers, developers) but those skilled in writing, research, visual design, outreach (PR, media relations, organizing and evangelism).

That’s because once finished, the next step is to evangelize widespread adoption of ElectOS. With many states having to figure out how to replace their aged-out systems in the next 4 years, the TrustTheVote Project will want to encourage its deployment to re-invent how America votes—where ballots are verifiably counted as cast. So, let’s do this!

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