AAAS Symposium on Voting Technology

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science is in Seattle in mid-February.

  http://www.aaas.org/meetings/index.html

One of the symposia is on Voting Technology - see below.

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60


Voting Technology: Current Assessment and Future Prospects
Sunday, February 15, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon

Organizers:
 Charles Stewart, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
 Phyllis Kahn, (DFL) 59B, Minnesota House of Representatives

PARTICIPANTS:
 Peter G. Neumann (S4-Speaker), SRI International
 Ted Selker (S4-Speaker), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 Michael Alvarez (S4-Speaker), California Institute of Technology
 David Elliott (S4-Speaker), State of Washington Secretary of State's Office
 David Dill (S4-Speaker), Stanford University
 Jim Adler (S4-Speaker), Votehere.net

AVAILABLE ABSTRACTS:
No available abstracts. [yet?]

SYNOPSIS:

Nearly a full quadrennium has passed since the notorious Florida
presidential election controversy cast the quality of America's voting
technologies in a negative light. This symposium will bring together a
collection of experts to discuss what progress has been made in
improving the performance of voting technologies over the past four
years and the issues that remain to be addressed. Three related issues
continue to demand the attention of the scientific and technological
communities, citizens, and election officials in the area of voting
technologies:

 (1) the security of networks for the transmission of election data,

 (2) the security and integrity of direct register electronic (DRE)
 voting devices, and

 (3) the design of voting equipment to minimize voter and election
 official confusion.

The third issue was of primary interest in the months immediately
following the Florida election fiasco. The first two issues have
arisen and have excited continued controversy as localities upgrade
their election systems from punch card systems to digital
interfaces. Questions to be addressed by symposium speakers include

 (1) What are the prospects for the development of robust and secure
 "Internet voting" options?

 (2) What technological hurdles are in the way of producing secure,
 secret, voter-verifiable election equipment and what are the likely
 solutions?

 (3) How might the principles of human factor engineering be applied
 to designing ballots, voting equipment, and tabulation equipment that
 reduces confusion for election officials and voters?

 (4) Will the typical voter going to the polls in 2004 be more or less
 likely to see his/her vote counted as it was cast, compared to 2000?

 (5) What, if any, political barriers face the application of the best
 science and technology to the problem of creating reliable and
 trusted election machines?