Workshop on Voter-Verifiable Election Systems 7/ 28-29 Denver

[papau]

-----Original Message-----
From: David L. Dill
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 11:34 AM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Call for Participation Workshop on Voter
Verifiable Elections



(Please re-distribute to anyone who may be interested.)

Workshop on Voter-Verifiable Election Systems
July 28-29, 2003, Denver Colorado
Adams Mark Hotel

Billions of dollars will be spent in the next few years on voting
equipment. Unfortunately, some believe the new technology may reduce
election integrity and voter confidence. A proposed solution is to
provide "voter verifiability," so that election results are
guaranteed to reflect the intent of the voters. The workshop aims to
bring together people interested in these issues.

To maximize attendance by election officials, vendors, and
technologists, the workshop is co-located and co-scheduled with the
IACREOT Annual Conference, which is the dominant conference for local
election officials. This year, IEEE will also have a meeting of its
election standards working group just after the workshop.

The Workshop will be in two parts. Monday afternoon will be a more
technical meeting and discussion, aimed at technologically oriented
participants. Tuesday morning will be aimed at election officials as
well as the media. The Monday discussions will be summarized on
Tuesday by a panel. Tuesday will also feature some panel format debate on key issues of interest to election officials, which can be expected to engender lively discussion.

We have worked out a general plan for the workshop and would now like
to invite proposals for presentations and panels, particular on Monday afternoon. Please email these to "[e-mail]".

Here are some examples of topics we might want to discuss in the Monday and Tuesday sessions. More details will appear in subsequent mailings.

Monday Afternoon:

Vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems

Various weaknesses and specific attacks have been identified by
researchers-from malware scenarios to mechanical-but until now little
of this has been reported.

Voter-verifiable election technology proposals

Various schemes have been proposed in the last few years, but there
has not been a focused forum for their presentation; remote or
Internet and other remote voting is a separate subject and would not
be included in this session. Examples include: printout under-glass,
printout in box, frog voting, secret-ballot receipts, non-printing,
etc.

Debating the relative merits

Panel format debates on various technology choices, such as:
differences between audit systems and tally systems: two kinds of
voter-verifiable technology.


Tuesday Morning:

Summarizing the vulnerabilities
Summary of first session Monday.

Summarizing the technology options
Summary of second session Monday

Election officials on operational issues

Election officials have expressed various operational concerns over
the course of the public debate and this would be an opportunity for
them to be aired in a cohesive way.

Brief presentations of solutions by vendors

There are several voting system vendors that have developed
voter-verifiable receipt printers solutions, none widely displayed to
date.

Status of local efforts for voter-verifiable systems

Efforts have appeared in a half-dozen or more states, led by
government, scientists, and
other groups; those involved have had neither a forum in which to meet
each other nor
report their experiences.

Potential outcomes:
o Creation of a community of interest
o Election official awareness/education
o Potential follow-on events
o Potential follow-on organization
o Impact on imminent standardization
o Press coverage


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Co-Chairs:
David L. Dill Stanford University
Barbara Simons USACM

Doug Chapin Electionline.org
David Chaum SureVote
Lorrie Faith Cranor AT&T Labs Research
Bill Gardner Secretary of State of New Hampshire
David Jefferson Lawrence Livermore Laboratories
Douglas W. Jones University of Iowa
Douglas Kellner Commissioner, Board of Elections in the City of
New York
Rebecca Mercuri Bryn Mawr and Harvard University
Peter G. Neumann SRI International
Rob Richie Center for Voting and Democracy
Peter Ryan University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Warren Slocum San Mateo County Registrar

[phoebe]

1. I was thinking of reposting this in the "calendar"

but this clearly needed to be on its own.

Thank you for posting in both forums.

[papau]

2. David Dill is an activist that I admire greatly - like Bev !!!!! !!!! :-)

:-)

[papau]

3. Doug Chapin of electionline.org will be "observer" -not "organizer"

On the announcement sent out earlier today, Doug Chapin of
electionline.org was erroneously listed as a member of the organizing
committee.

This was my mistake, for which I apologize.


Mr Chapin says:

All of us at electionline.org are interested in the outcome of the
voter-verifiable election systems debate in California and elsewhere. However, as befits our non-partisan, non-advocacy stance, we will participate as observers, not sponsors or advocates of any particular solution. Please delete my name and that of electionline.org from any further emails or publications concerning this conference.