Cover Story step-at-a-time implementation, which government agencies want and need. In Digital Voting’s registration system, a “wizard� guides would-be voters to fill out a form online, which can then be printed out. The program prevents applicants from printing registration forms that are incomplete or contain errors. This alone improves the quality of applications arriving at elections offices, thus reducing workloads and improving accuracy, Sebes and Miller assert. The Digital Voting design can also attach a unique barcode to and capture the data in each application at the time it is printed, which makes it additionally trackable. In one scenario, an elections clerk could receive an original, signed application. Instead of manually entering the information into the local voter-management system, the clerk would merely call up the digital copy by scanning in its barcode. The signed original would then be checked against its image. If there is a match, approval can be completed with a single keystroke. This speeds the approval process and reduces errors and costs, according to Digital Voting. Also, with barcodes, audits could analyze data that would reveal whether an individual clerk or other “insider� appears to reject a disproportionate number of voters who live in a given neighborhood or are affiliated with a particular political party, for example. For California, Digital Voting’s registration software would not only be freely available and open, it also would accommodate signed paper applications as required by current law, making them easier to manage and audit. Sebes believes the system would offer “the best of both worlds, automation and paper,� conserving scarce staff and fiscal resources while building confidence in the registration process and elections as a whole. One of the largest nonprofit organizations involved in voter registration deployed Digital Voting’s software in 2009. Rock the Vote, which focuses on younger voters, is the single largest third-party registrar in the country, according to Executive Director Heather Smith. During the 2008 election cycle 2.6 million citizens registered directly or indirectly through Rock the Vote’s online services, which it currently hosts across about 23,000 partner sites — including blogs, Facebook pages and MySpace profiles. Since going live last September, 40,000 people have used the Rock the Vote online system to register to vote. Sebes said he expects
to see a larger spike this summer. igital Voting is actively working with eight states — California, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington — collaborating with some on specific Trust the Vote components. More than 25 percent of the country’s voters reside in these states. It is also in conversations with officials in another 11 states, including Michigan and Texas — a group encompassing another 25 percent of the nation’s voters. The foundation’s leaders hope that by demonstrating the capabilities of its voter-registration program there might be acceptance of open-source software at the federal level, as well as certification of Digital Voting’s software in upcoming national elections. Much of the work is related to two key pieces of Congressional legislation: The 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act and its follow-on bill, the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act. These laws are intended to streamline registration and voting for the 6 million Americans — military and civilian — deployed or residing abroad. They require the states to make online registration available to them. “Near-term we hope to work with some of those states to help build the capabilities they need to conform with overseas and expatriate voter requirements,� Sebes said. “We’re very excited about what that means in terms of motivating broad support for putting reasonable and open digital-elections solutions in place going forward.� Sebes and Miller say they already have partnerships in place, an understanding of elections requirements, software that has been deployed and blueprints for the future. Much more work lies ahead. Digital Voting needs to broaden its financial support and attract an ever-wider community of volunteer contributors. And without a critical mass of technologist and other contributors, it risks failure, like so many startups, despite good intentions. But Sebes and Miller are hopeful their venture will bring about the large-scale change they’ve envisioned. “Once the voting systems in place are broadly viewed as trustworthy it’s more likely that a serious national conversation — not just another polarizing food fight — will emerge next time we have a big problem, which in our view is highly likely to occur,� Sebes said. “The conversation we need is about larger, more salient issues, like arcane statutes and electoral processes, all in urgent need of calm discussion and sensible reform.� N
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Don Feria
About the cover: John Sebes is co-director and chief technology officer for the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation. Photo by Christian Pease and Joseph Garappolo.
Joe Villareal samples new touchscreen technology at Palo Alto City Hall in October 2003.
TALK ABOUT IT: How much trust do you put in computerized voting systems? Share your thoughts on Town Square at www.PaloAltoOnline.com
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