[Today's guest post is from election technology expert Doug Jones, who is now revealed as also being an encyclopedia of U.S. elections history. Doug's remarks below were in a discussion about how to effectively use post-election ballot-count audits as a means to gain trust in the correct operation of voting machines -- particularly timely, given [...]

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Some of the feedback on my internet/email voting post can be summed up this way:
Is email voting really that bad? Sure, emailed ballots can be snooped, tampered, or diverted en route, but so can paper vote-by-mail ballots – yet we still use them. So what, specifically, is so much worse about emailed ballots?
First off, I [...]

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I’ve got a word to say about “pilots”. It seems timely given what seems to be a serious uptick in discussion, legislation, and trials of “pilots” of new use of election technology. Actually, the words have already been said, and by people who know much more than I do about it, at the UOCAVA Summit [...]

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This is the last long post about the UOCAVA Summit underway in Munich, but in an unannounced move, below I am disclosing all of the topics and questions in tomorrow’s (apparently) much anticipated Internet Voting Debate.
I apologize to those looking for a quick (more typical) blog post on the matter.  But there is (I think) [...]

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I have arrived in Munich, reached my hotel and actually caught a nap.  It was a sloppy slushy day here from what I can tell; about 30 degrees and some wet snow; but spring is around the corner.  On the flight over the Pole last evening (I’m a horrible plane sleeper) I worked on final [...]

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I am on my way to Munich, as I post this, for the 2010 UOCAVA Summit.  The OSDV Foundation is a co-host this year, and we’re coordinating the technology track of this 3-day gathering focused on the issues and opportunities for our overseas voters.  This year’s event is arguably the most important UOCAVA (Uniformed and [...]

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We’ve been spending a good chunk of our time lately on generating ballots, and on the steps leading up to ballot generation. You might think that the lead-up would be simple — making lists of contests and candidates — but actually there is lots more to it. In fact, it’s been much more time consuming [...]

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Thanks again to David Jefferson for his post yesterday on the lessons for Internet voting of the Google/China news (NYT: In Rebuke of China, Focus Falls on Cybersecurity). To answer some follow-up questions, I’ll explain a bit about the term vote servers that David referred to.
Let’s start with a little background on Internet voting. Many [...]

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[My thanks to to election and tech expert David Jefferson for contributing this excellent, pithy, and though-provoking reflection on the day's top tech/policy news story. -- EJS]

Google recently announced in an important change of policy that it will stop censoring search results for queries coming from China.  That is interesting in its own right, but [...]

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I’d like to answer a fine question posed by Jered in a comment to a blog posted by my esteemed colleague Pito Salas. Jered allowed as how the basic idea of OSDV was a fine idea, but asked “What’s the plan to get OSDV-based systems deployed?”
A great question, but where I differ with Jered is [...]

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