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.

Voter Services Portal: Open Source Innovation

The Voter Services Portal component of the Open Source Election Technology Framework is a freely available highly extensible online voter registration platform that can cut the cost of States' and jurisdictions' custom development by as much as 75% and reduce the time to develop and deploy from months or more to merely a few weeks.  Why wouldn't any jurisdiction moving to online voter services strongly consider this freely available source code, open for innovation?  That's the whole point of our non-profit technology R&D effort: increase confidence in elections and their outcomes by offering technology innovations that can be easily adopted, adapted, and deployed.  Sure, there are costs associated with adaptation and deployment; after all, open source does not necessarily mean free source.  But the time and taxpayer dollars savings should make this an easy decision...

Read More

Fighting for Democracy Means More Than Bearing Arms

On this 239th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, we find ourselves reflecting on the causes of democracy and the good and just fight to protect and preserve democracy--not only here in the United States of America, but globally.  The cause of the OSET Foundation, manifest in the TrustTheVote Project, is one important, arguably vital aspect of that good and just fight.  It is likewise important to illustrate that fighting for our democracy means more than bearing arms.

Read More

Making Elections Data Open Data: The Sequel

Today, members of the Core Team are in Vail, Colorado at the IACREOT Conference to unveil the next phase of VoteStream, the elections results and reporting subsystem of our Open Source Election Technology Framework.  This is an awesome day, and we owe a great deal of thanks to the Knight Foundation for continuing to support this important part of the Framework.

Read More

NCSL Convenes Policy & Election Technology Summit

NCSL Conference on Policy and Elections Technology is in full swing in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Our Chief Development Officer is set to participate in an interesting panel on the future of elections technology in a post-HAVA funded world.  We have a position document responding to several questions posed to us in advance of the conference available for download...

Read More

OSET Foundation Comments "Key" to USPTO Service Announcement

Intellectual property is a key ingredient to our work.  Monitoring developments relevant to that work is important. Suggestions we urged the USPTO to consider in order to improve 3rd party submission of prior art and crowd-sourcing prior art appear to have been adopted with their recent announcement of a new Patent Application Alert System.  This is will be a very useful tool for us and many.  We applaud the USPTO and are humbled they appear to have fully adopted our comments.

Read More
Announcements, Commentary Ms. Voting Matters Announcements, Commentary Ms. Voting Matters

Launch of New Election Technology Forum

The Foundation announces launch of new election technology news and information channel, Election Technology News (Election-Tech), an eMail listserv forum (with full RSS-syndication support) available to elections professionals everywhere, supported and managed by the OSET Foundation, and powered by ListBox and Attensa.

Read More
Commentary, Voting System Technology, Voter Registration Christine Santoro, Esq. Commentary, Voting System Technology, Voter Registration Christine Santoro, Esq.

Automatic Voter Registration: Oregon Governor Signs Bill to "Just Do it."

Oregon relying on its pioneering heritage and Nike spirit says, "Just Do It" for automatic voter registration. And this move seems to provide a worked example for our CTO's recent blog post about the technical simplicity to do so.  Oregon already being a vote-by-mail state with online voter registration to boot, was likely able to benefit from those prior innovations.  But regardless, as our Foundation's Secretary and General Counsel points out in this post, its a smart move...

Read More
Commentary, Election Technology Reform E. John Sebes Commentary, Election Technology Reform E. John Sebes

State Certification of Future Voting Systems — 3 Points of Departure

This is a more technical post than others here given the broadening of an audience visiting this Foundation web site in search for content like this article below rather than hanging out on our more geeky Project site (which is soon to be relaunched and be way more engaging for all audiences, we're excited to report).  Usually, you will find this kind of content over there, while here we'll talk more about voting experience innovations, policy matters, and progress of the Project.  So, for those who are passionate about elections reform and improving the voting experience, but are not as fluent in some of the technical issues, feel free to look this over, but do not fret if seems like gobbledygook.  There is more relevant stuff for your concerns to come.  Ready?  Here we go...

Read More

Advancing Election Data Standards: View From the Trenches

Elections data standards are essential to delivering real innovation.  The annual Election Data Standards meeting opened today in Los Angeles, CA.  We thought we'd give you an overview of just what in the hec this is about and why its essential to creating a voting experience that's easy, convenient, and dare we say delightful.  Dry?  Kinda.  But a peek at the real in the trenches work we're doing.  Yep.

Read More
Gregory Miller Gregory Miller

Biting the Bitcoin; Reflections on the Latest "Bitvote" Buzz

In those continuing efforts to route around the abysmal state of voting in America, we're starting to hear an increasing drumbeat about Bitcoin as a basis for reinventing elections.  We've been watching this discussion or evangelism unfold in the past few weeks.  We even fielded questions from politicos in the Beltway this past week about it (seriously).

As technocrats at heart around here, how can we not have our tails in a slow wag over the potential of Bitcoin technology (specifically the Block Chain)?  Well, a slow wag maybe; getting our tails in a twist over it for voting?  Not so much.  And here's why.

Read More

Its Our Birthday! A Reflection on How We Do What We Do

Wow.  How time flies.  Its our birthday this week! (Monday the 17th to be precise; it was a Friday in November 2006.)  We are 8-years old!  You know, that's a long life by the measure of most commercial technology ventures.  But a bit different as a non-profit technology venture. So, we wanted to post something today in honor of our birthday and the progress we've made.  Please read on...

Read More
Ms. Voting Matters Ms. Voting Matters

A Great Way to Help Our Project While You Shop

Amazon and the OSET Foundation are teaming up this holiday to help public fund raising for the TrustTheVote Project. Read about this simple awesome way to help the cause of a better voting experience while you shop.

Read More

The Moose Lurking in the Room

To hec with the elephant (regardless of who you think will control Congress after election day), the real beast in the room may be a Moose -- Alaska style.  Our CTO notes an article from yesterday that points out how Alaska's close U.S. senatorial race, combined with their allowing ballots to be digitally returned across the Internet, may pose the greatest threat to a derailed election we've seen yet. 

But the real point John makes is that sadly, Alaskan voters may not even be aware of the risks and who in this case is watching over their ballots -- at least those returned in the inherently insecure manner of the Internet, no matter how "secure" the "experts" are claiming the process to be.  If the ballot return system in Alaska were truly as secure as their vendor claims, then Banks would be using their methods, and the massive amounts of hacked customer personal information at major brands this year might have been alleviated.  Have a look and give us your take.

Read More