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.
With the Election Past; The Clock is Running
With the election behind us, regardless of how you view the results, one irrefutable fact remains... the 2016 general election is absolutely the last election the existing voting infrastructure of this nation can possibly support. Another fact is that the machinery of America's elections is on its last legs (literally)...
Announcing: Our Story in a New 2-Minute Video
Today we’re launching our story, in a 2-minute video developed by a team led by Meegan Gregg, our Director of Citizen Outreach. It involved an enormously generous grant from XPLANE .....
Announcing the Pennsylvania Canvasser App
The TrustTheVote Project is proud to announce the launch of the Pennsylvania Voter Registration App developed in partnership with Rock the Vote, Pennsylvania Voice, and the office of the Pennsylvania Secretary of State. This first in the nation mobile App is the culmination of over a year of work and marks a significant improvement in the voting experience for the citizens of Pennsylvania....
Response Letter to POLITICO Article on Critical Election Infrastructure
Below is a letter sent to Tim Starks and Cory Bennett of POLITICO, who cover cyber-security issues. There seems to be some fundamental misunderstandings of the challenges local election officials (LEOs) face, the process by which the equipment is qualified for deployment (albeit decrepit archaic technology by today's standards), what the vulnerabilities are (and are not), and why a designation of "critical infrastructure" is an important consideration. We attempt to address some of those points in this response to Tim's otherwise really good coverage....
Finally, Gov Starts Talking About Critical Democracy Infrastructure
This week the Government started earnest discussions about election infrastructure as possibly rising to the level of critical infrastructure. Like us, we think they're sensing that this coming general election is ripe for disruption, both from foreign operator but potentially even domestic actors. We think this is a great idea, but not without the required action to make it really happen. Designations are start, but there is a bunch of work to be done...
The Awful New Four Letter Word: "Rigged"
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt: the recipe for a disastrous election outcome. FUD attacks are one of the easiest ways to derail an election. This is a very tangential surface of the voting infrastructure deterioration problem... a problem the Obama Administration is finally asking us about, and while we cannot say more about that (yet) what we want to mention here is the horribly disturbing comments this morning from one campaign's officials about the likelihood of an illegitimate election this November. This is not kewl...
Showtime: OSET to Participate at DNC Convention on "Future of Democracy"
We are totally excited about an amazing opportunity tomorrow, Tuesday July 26th, to appear at an event as part of the Democrat National Convention. We'll be launching a new video...
Discussing Voter Participation Innovation at the White House
Today, our own Meegan Gregg, Director of Citizen Outreach, is participating in a planning workshop in advance of a Civic Initiative Kickoff Summit at the White House scheduled for later this summer. We are honored to be included in a conversation and planning session where the importance of innovating the ultimate act of voting itself is finally being incorporated into the discussion about innovating civic and voter engagement in general .....
A Brexit Foreshadow
The Brexit is a teachable moment for American democracy. No amount of voting technology work we have underway can address this in time for November, and its really a different issue altogether... actually making the effort to cast a ballot. Because if people fail to show this time... the result could be hugely unfortunate.
Fixing Voting Infrastructure: A Good Start to a Great Idea
In April, Representative Henry "Hank" Johnson (GA-04) introduced a bill in Congress that went largely unnoticed by most. We noticed. We prepared comments, feedback, and are now ready to offer more invited input. At first we were a little dubious because we think the "ask" can be tuned, but then we realized the importance of Rep. Johnson's vision and the potential of this Bill...
Democracy Rebooted; Some of it Left on the Cutting Room Floor
What a day! The Atlantic Council hosted an executive round table that featured an international group of 30 of the best minds in election administration and technology. One of our co-founders, Gregory Miller was fortunate to be included in that group of participants. There was an excellent two-hour discussion that can be seen here. Read on to learn about our responses.....
Rebooting Democracy: OSET at the Atlantic Council
On Tuesday morning, we are honored to have our Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer, Gregory Miller participating in an invitation round table discussing this new report published this week by the Atlantic Council, authored by Connie McCormack. You can watch the web cast of this event here starting at 9:00AM EDT in Washington, D.C. .....
Supporting San Francisco's Open Source Leadership
We call to our reader's attention the approaching budget deadline in San Francisco to fund the launch of their open source voting system initiative and to make an announcement of our own in that regard.
Announcing Collaboration to Produce Global Election Technology Industry Study
This week the Wharton School together with its Public Policy Institute and the OSET Foundation announced an important industry research project to further inform business, government, and philanthropy on the state of the global election technology industry. The research team is comprised of two principal investigators: Dr. Lorin Hitt of Wharton and Gregory Miller of the OSET Foundation, leading six Wharton students, and managed by Andrew Coopersmith of the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative ...
A Solemn Day of Fighting the Good Fight
In the midst of our heads-down work and of the goodness in advancing the cause of innovation in critical democracy infrastructure, we pause.
On December 14th, our Chief Technology Officer, John Sebes's Father, Dr. Jeno Sebes, passed away in Memphis, TN. Below is the obituary (courtesy of Barbara Coll, John's wife) that will be published in the paper tomorrow.
I Totally Just Voted!
Ms. Voting Matters here, and I'm going to start spending more time sharing things with our readers here who couldn't care less about code (although it does cause change ;) but who, like myself, really care a bunch more about how we preserve our right to be a part of our democracy. And for us, that means more easily and conveniently casting our ballot and knowing our ballots are counted as cast, right? So for you, my thought today is about something that makes total sense on the one hand, and totally doesn't on the other... the voter selfie. I went back and forth on this for days, reading various views from Vogue to the NY Times, and here is where I come down on this. I hope you'll think about it, and reach a similar conclusion...
Ensuring Preservation of Publicly Owned Intellectual Property
For our U.S. readers: Happy Labor Day. Rest. You deserve it.
A question arose recently about our efforts to preserve the public availability of technology resulting from work in OSET Foundation efforts, namely the TrustTheVote Project.
San Francisco Thinking Forward on Electoral Technology
Last month San Francisco issued a fast-tracked Request For Information ("RFI") to obtain insight, knowledge, and a reality check on the potential for adopting, adapting, and deploying a next generation voting system that is based on open source software technology. We responded to the RFI. However, in the process, we unintentionally misrepresented the status of OSI review of our OSS license, which we've now corrected. Read on about our licensing to ensure adoption of OSS election technology, and some comments about San Francisco's thought leadership in researching open source opportunities for electoral technology innovation.
Hacking Elections: Opportunity Clicking
An emerging media outlet, Who.What.Why posted an article on Monday in their Threats to Democracy section that is totally worth reading. Seriously. When people think of election theft, most assume that amounts to somebody doing something to alter how ballots are cast or counted. Apparently, we should start thinking bigger.
Repositories Update Continued: VoteStream Dominates
Today we provide another follow-up to our continuing report on our Repositories and source code development efforts. As others of the Core team have mentioned when contributing posts to the OSET blog (verses the TrustTheVote Project Blog), we appreciate the audience is diversifying over here, and want to forewarn you that parts of what follow get kinda geeky but we try to provide links for those curious to learn more. (Also Note: The TrustTheVote site is about to be re-launched within the next month, so we're trying to limit blog posts over there.) Anyway, we suspect what makes it geekish more than anything are code-names and acronyms. We’ll try to minimize the alphabet soup. OK, here we go…