Election Updates

Our first podcast attempt ... you can download the mp3 file ... we will keep working on publishing this so that folks can simply subscribe to the podcast!

This week, The IBM Center for the Business of Government released our report on the need for electronic data transaction standards (ETS) for election systems. In the report, we note that ETS would create a standard election terminology and standard framework for collecting and communicating these data. What would the benefit of this be for election officials (and researchers like us)?

First, election officials would be able to create "plug and play" elections systems, which would free them from being tied to a single vendor for election management and voting system software.

Second, it would all states to easily compare and communicate voter registration data across states. Approximately 27.5 million people move to another state between presidential elections, so keeping the state voter registration databases clean in a timely manner requires data sharing across states.

Finally, ETS means that there would be one standard definition and data collection format for all state election data. It would be much easier to study elections if we had common data from every state.

I have presented this report to the EAC (see previous posting) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) and we are looking forward to working with states and the EAC to move toward the adoption of such a standard. There has been quite a bit of activity on this standard recently with IEEE, and hopefully a concensus can build around such a standard.

Recently Roy Saltman distributed an announcement regarding his new book on voting technology. I recently had an opportunity to read the manuscript, and it is one that researchers and policymakers who are interested in voting technology will want to read when it is available. It has a thorough discussion of the history of voting technology, a subject that Saltman knows well, being the author of an influential early National Bureau of Standards study "Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying" (1988).

Saltman's new book is titled "The History and Politics of Voting Technology: In Quest of Integrity and Public Confidence," to be published by Palgrave Macmillan with what looks to be a current release date of late January 2006.

The publisher has some information regarding Saltman's new book available, including the following short description: "Roy G. Saltman traces the evolution of voting technology, highlighting how the antiquated systems in use today are a legacy of the industrial revolution and the early computer revolution of the 1950s. He also examines the tangled responsibilities of federal, state, and local authorities in facilitating, monitoring, and counting the votes, creating a disturbing picture of this elemental civic duty."

We look forward to the publication of Saltman's book this winter.

MIT VTP colleague Ron Rivest has an interesting new working paper out on his concept of "preliminary voting." As the abstract of the paper states:

"We introduce the notion of preliminary voting, or pre-voting, wherein a voter deposits --- perhaps over the Internet --- a preliminary vote or a pre-vote with election authorities at some time before the close of elections. Prevotes are not official votes, and need not be kept private ... With prevoting, a voter must visit a polling site to make any final adjustments to prevote in private, and to actually cast her (perhaps modified) prevote."

This is a very provocative and interesting concept and working paper, well worth reading!

The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has just put up materials relating to the hearings they held in Pasadena on the Caltech campus about the proposed Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG). Note that the deadline for public comment is rapidly approaching (5pm EDT on September 30, 2005).

Enjoy the Pasadena hearing webcast materials. Don't miss "Public Hearing - Panel 2: The Academic Community", which includes testimony of Thad Hall and VTP colleague Ted Selker. Both Thad's and Ted's written testimony are also available.

This is our first posting, of this new blog about election reform, voting technology and election administration. We plan on trying to keep this blog updated regularily with postings about new research and studies, with links and commentary when new reports and analyses are available, and when our own work is published or made available.