Listen to the podcast! What are the headwinds and tailwinds to the work Votem is doing? Why is Votem focused on secure and accessible voting? How is Votem improving voting for voters? election officials? What is the impact and feedback from elections run Votem's platform? This podcast features Jeffrey Stern of Votem, [...]
All voting systems should be held to the highest possible standard. However, there is a discrepancy in the standards applied to paper and electronic systems. While paper is familiar and tangible, paper’s proponents promote its use and advantages without carefully considering its flaws and limitations, despite applying the most rigorous scrutiny to electronic systems without [...]
Motivations Every eligible individual should be able to actively participate in democracy by easily and safely voting when, how, and where they want. Democratic institutions generally subscribe to this philosophy, yet do little to implement it in practice. The guiding philosophy follows: “We should be guided by the dynamics of the voting public we serve — seniors [...]
Coercion in Context The risk of voter coercion (voter interference, bribery, vote selling) exists when a voter can demonstrate how they have voted in a given election. It’s a difficult risk to mitigate because robust election systems have to reconcile privacy and security requirements that both guarantee the correctness of election results and the [...]
Vote of Confidence: A Black Box Democracy A “black box” is, in technological terms, a system that can only be viewed by its inputs and outputs. The inner-workings of a black box remain a mystery to any outside observer. In the world of voting, Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines are often referred [...]
Vote of Confidence: Polling Places Tragedies Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people in Afghanistan who were senselessly killed as they stood in line to register to vote. It is our sincere hope that our work at Votem will help create a future where is mass violence against voters is [...]
Vote of Confidence: Voting for the Ages This past Tuesday, a bill was submitted to the DC Council that would lower the District’s voting age in all elections to 16. If passed, the bill would allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in everything from local to federal contests. With Congress having the final [...]
Vote of Confidence: Who Paper Hurts the Most Last week, we explored why the arguments for paper-based voting systems don’t stand up as well as they may seem. As previously stated in this series, paper certainly resolves some of the most pressing issues with today’s outdated voting machines but a regression to exclusively [...]
Vote of Confidence: The Mobile Doubters and Paper (Voting) Tigers In 1920, The New York Times famously made the contention that “no rocket will ever leave the earth’s atmosphere.” In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit, smashing the Times’ prediction and launching the world’s two major powers into a space [...]
Vote of Confidence: Blockchain Voting Last week, we devoted “Vote of Confidence” to the “impending crisis” facing the American voting infrastructure. The logical answer to such an article would be a set of solutions or recommendations to avoid this impending crisis. Many such an article was written, especially as we are continually [...]
