RE: NIST Voting Standards symposium 12/10-11, Maryland

["Mcgrath, Bob________PTC_MKT" <bob.mcgrath@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is incredible that Davidson is willing to appear on the same stage as
Dill, Mercuri and the others, since at the national convention of County
Election officials held in Denver in late July of this year, Dill and others
were ostracized by the election officials community as "hypercritical
academics steeped in conspiracy theories" (or similar to that effect).  I
arranged for an interview with Dill, Mercuri, and Barbara Simons by William
Rivers Pitt, the managing editor of http://www.truthout.org.  Please go to
his website to see their interview, which appeared as his headline article
on October 20th of this year.  Go to the voting sub-topic if it no longer is
on their home page.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Grinbergs [mailto:saule@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 1:38 AM
To: bcv@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: NIST Voting Standards symposium 12/10-11, Maryland


Greetings,

I share this NIST/HAVA voting symposium news, calling your attention to
these items:

- participants include:

	* e-voting experts Dill, Jones, and Mercuri
	* Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davidson  

- NIST Information Technology Laboratory is in Gaithersburg, MD; Boulder not
mentioned, perhaps no Boulder connection (if this meeting was at the Boulder
labs, we'd be all set (;-) )

- the conference happens to be just days before Boulder County's scheduled
award of contract

We should watch closely for media reports about this event; a Google News
search for "NIST voting standards" returns no hits (I set up an email alert
to be notified when something appears). I emailed symposium info to the
local papers and KGNU. 

---

<http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/voting_symposium.htm>

Commerce's NIST Launches Voting Standards Initiative at December Symposium
Symposium to Bring Together Stakeholders in Building Trust, Confidence in
Voting Systems

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Oct. 24, 2003

NIST and Help America Vote Act of 2002 
<http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/voting_symposium.htm> 

Philip Bulman
(301) 975-5661

As part of its responsibilities under the Help America Vote Act of 2002
(HAVA), the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) will hold a symposium on building trust and confidence in
voting systems at the agency's Gaithersburg, Md., headquarters on Dec.
10-11, 2003. The two-day event will bring together a host of people with an
interest in election technology, including federal, state and local election
officials; university researchers; independent testing laboratories;
election law experts; hardware and software vendors; and others concerned
about or involved with the latest developments in voting systems.

Enacted by Congress in October 2002, the HAVA legislation gave NIST a key
role in helping realize nationwide improvements in voting systems by January
2006.

NIST plans to use the December symposium as a springboard for its
collaboration with the election community prior to the implementation of the
HAVA. The meeting agenda will include four panel discussions on key issues
for improving voting systems:

* specification, testability and qualification;
* security and openness;
* usability and accessibility; and
* next steps/consensus issues.

World-renowned experts in the voting standards arena are scheduled to take
part in the symposium panels. Confirmed participants include:

* Jim Adler, founder, president and CEO of VoteHere, a manufacturer of
electronic voting systems;

* Donetta Davidson, Colorado Secretary of State and treasurer, National
Association of Secretaries of State;

* David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University, and
initiator of the VerifiedVoting.org Web site;

* Doug Jones, authority on computer voting, voting history expert, former
chairman of the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic
Voting Systems, and associate professor of computer science at the
University of Iowa;

* Rebecca Mercuri, electronic voting systems expert, assistant professor of
computer science at Bryn Mawr College and research fellow at Harvard
University's John F. Kennedy School of Government;

* Avi Rubin, associate professor of computer science and technical director
of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University; and

* Tom Wilkey, National Association of State Elections Directors, and former
director, New York State Board of Elections.

NIST's Information Technology Laboratory, which is hosting the symposium and
will coordinate NIST's HAVA activities, has considerable expertise in the
technical areas that will be the focus of the event. Additionally, NIST
researchers frequently work with colleagues in industry, academic
institutions and other government agencies to develop standards for emerging
and rapidly changing information technologies.

For more information on the Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems
symposium, including an online registration form, go to
http://vote.nist.gov.

As a non-regulatory agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce's Technology
Administration, NIST develops and promotes measurement, standards and
technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade and improve the quality
of life. For more information, visit www.nist.gov.

-- 
Citizens for Verifiable Voting (Boulder County): <http://bcv.booyaka.com/>