Voting and Elections

Index

Affiliation

• ACCURATE
    A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections (now defunct)

Courses

• 22C:196, Fall 2001 Seminar
• CS:4980, Spring 2020 Seminar

Tutorials and Collections

• Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count, a book coauthored with Barbara Simons, published by CSLI Publications and distributed by The University of Chicago Press, Available April 15, 2012.

• A Brief Illustrated History of Voting
• Counting Mark-Sense Ballots
• Voting on Paper Ballots
• Counting Votes
• Testing Voting Systems
• Chad, Hanging Chad and Pregnant Chad
• Data diodes applied to voting systems
• The Vote-o-graph Experiments on Touch Screen Voting

Commentary

2024

• Election Integrity in the United States: How Will 2024 Compare to 2020? (official copy) with Hal Berghel, IEEE Computer, 55, 131-137 (Oct. 2024) pages 90-94.
• Suggested Principles for State Statutes Regarding Ballot Marking Devices Letter to the State Government Committees of the Pennsylvania legislature, March 7, 2024. Co-signed by 19 others.
• Scan, Shuffle, Rescan: Machine-Assisted Election Audits With Untrusted Scanners with Sunoo Park, Ronald L. Rivest and Adam Sealfon, Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2024, Mar. 4-8, 2024, Willemstad, Curaço.

• The Conspiracy Theories of 2020. Nov 20, 2023.
• Letter to Jason Providakes, MITRE Corporation, June 15, 2023. Co-signed with 23 others.
• Unsealing the Halderman report would be Responsible Vulnerability Disclosure, May 11, 2023. Letter co-signed with 14 others.

• Scan, Shuffle, Rescan: Two-Prover Election Audits With Untrusted Scanners, Nov. 9, 2022, with Sonoo Park, Ronald L. Rivest and Adam Sealfon.
• Opinion: We shouldn't abandon machine-counted election ballots in the Sunday Des Moines Register Mar. 20, 2022 (submitted draft, Mar 13).
• Letter of endorsement, Feb. 3, 2022 (with additional endorsements added as of Feb. 11), for a draft version of a proposed update to New York's election laws; more explanation of the proposed changes is here. As indicated in the explanatory notes, this draft is the product of a committee effort between Doug Jones, Phil Stark and David Siffert, orchestrated by Lulu Friesdat.
• The State of the Art in Voting Machine Techology: Just How Reliable Are They? (official copy) with Hal Berghel, IEEE Computer, 55, 118-126 (Jan. 2022) pages 90-94.

• Five Myths About Voting Machines (official copy), Washington Post, Dec. 24, 2020.
• Elections are Partisan Affairs, Election Security Isn't (official copy) (Nov. 16, revised Nov. 18, 2020), co-signer.
• Expert Statement on the US 2020 General Election (Nov. 16, 2020), co-signer.
• Statewide electoral uniformity is important, and states are running out of time to get there (official copy), coauthored with Alec Yasinsac Des Moines Register, Oct. 4, 2020.

• Amicus brief / Frank Heindel v Marci Andino April 15, 2019, with the National Election Defense Coalition.

• Affidavit supporting Jack Lackey in support of a recount in the 6^th Magesterial District, Christian County, Kentucky, Nov. 19, 2018.
• Election Integrity 2018: Are We Better Off Than We Were in 2016? (official copy) with Hal Berghel, IEEE Computer, 51, 11 (Nov. 2018) pages 90-94.
• Defending Against Election Hacking, presentation to the Iowa State Association of County Auditors, July 25, 2018, Iowa City, Iowa.

• The Election of 2016: Was It Hacked?, a talk before the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, March 9, 2017. Video transcript available (51 min).

• Declaration / Great America v. Wisconsin Dec. 7, 2016, in support of Jill Stein's effort to continue the Wisconsin recount.
• Affidavit / Stein Petition Nov. 30, 2016, in support of a recount of ballots in the presidential race in Michigan.
• Affidavit / Stein Petition Nov. 28, 2016, in support of a recount of ballots in the presidential race in Wisconsin,
• Threats to the 2016 Election, prepared Remarks for a press (tele)conference convened by PutinTrump.org, at 11:00 AM CDT, Nov. 1, 2016
• Douglas Jones on Today's Voting Machines (pdf), (official copy), with Hal Berghel, IEEE Computer, 49, 10 (Oct. 2016), pages 84-89. Reprinted in IEEE Computing Edge, Dec. 2016, pages 10-15.

• Internet voting in the U.S., official copy, coauthored with Barbara Simons, Communications of the ACM, 55, 10 (Oct 2012) pages 68-77.
• Problems come when using databases to disqualify voters, Guest opinion in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Aug. 23, 2012.

• SOBA: Secrecy-preserving Observable Ballot-level Audit (official copy), with Josh Benaloh, Eric L. Lazarus, Mark Lindeman and Philip B. Stark, EVT/WOTE'11, 2011 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, August 9, 2011, San Francisco.
• Expert Report / Banfield v. Aichele (No. 422 M.D. 2006) July 31, 2011, regarding use of DRE voting machines in Pennsylvania.

• Affidavit / Goldie v. Township of Brock, Ontario December 9, 2010, concerning postal ballots, mark-sense scanners and the need to visually inspect overvotes and undervotes.
• Kazakhstan: The Sailau E-Voting System, in Direct Democracy: Progress and Pitfalls of Election Technology, Michael Yard, Editor, IFES, 2010; pages 74-95.
• Affidavit / Warner protest in Cumberland Co., NC Nov. 18, 2010, concerning vote flipping, touch-screen calibration and the efficacy of summary screens on DRE voting machines.
• Internet Voting for UOCAVA Voters -- Note on the Relevance of European Experience position paper and Barriers to Effective Internet Voting for UOCAVA voters (official copy), presentation slides, Workshop on UOCAVA Remote Voting Systems, Washington DC, August 6, 2010.
• On Optical Mark Sense Scanning ( Official Copy) in Towards Trustworthy Elections, David Chaum, Markus Jakobsson, Ronald Rivest, et al, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 6000, 2010; pages 175-190.

• Affadavit / Thompson v. Hargett Oct. 19, 2009, providing advice on the process for acquiring new voting systems and discussing the merits of current alternatives.
• Affadavit / Banfield v. Cortes Oct. 15 2009, if the state can defend itself by reference to source code, plaintiffs must have access to that code.
• What Do We Do Next?, slides for a panel discussion at the end of the End-to-End Voting Systems Workshop, Oct. 13-14, 2009, Washington, DC.
• Some Problems with End-to-End Voting (presentation) position paper presented at the End-to-End Voting Systems Workshop, Oct. 13-14, 2009, Washington DC.
• Early Requirements for Mechanical Voting Systems ( Official copy, slides), RE-Vote'09: First International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for E-voting Systems, Atlanta, Aug. 31, 2009.
• Challenges on Voting system Certification position statement for a panel discussion at the Innovations in Election Technology Conference, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, Minneapolis, May 28, 2009.
• Affidavit / Gusciora v. Corzine April 6, 2009, on the inadequacy of parallel testing without auditing.

• Declaration / Nevada Secretary of State Oct. 30, 2008. On the rights of election observers.
• Voting Systems Would Benefit From More Attention to Human Factors by Mike Byrne, Tiffany Jastrzembski, Douglas W. Jones, Bill Killam and Whitney Quesenbery, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Oct. 27, 2008.
• Statement / Banfield v. Cortes Jan. 23, 2008, on the security of DRE voting machines.

• OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission final report on the 18 August 2007 Parliamentary Elections in Kazakhstan (Official copy) published by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe - Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, October 30, 2007. This is a diplomatic document, individual authors are not attributed. The 19 member core observing team (official copy) was largely responsible for drafting this document; Douglas Jones drafted sections V-C and XIII-B on electronic voting (pages 11-13 and 24-25) and recommendations 12 through 15 (page 32).
• The Impact of Technology on Election Observation slides for an invited talk at VoComp 2007 Portland, Oregon, July 16-18, 2007.
• Computer Security Versus the Public's Right to Know notes for a panel discussion on Electronic Voting Integrity, Computers, Freedom and Privacy, Montreal, May 4, 2007.
• Perspectives on Electronic Voting, in From Power Outages to Paper Trails (author's copy), IFES Global Electoral Organization Conference, March 28, 2007, Washington DC.
• OSCE/ODIHR Election Assment Mission for the 22 November 2006 Paraimentary Election in the Netherlands (Official copy) published by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe - Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, March 12, 2007. This is a diplomatic document, individual authors are not attributed. The 9 member Election Assessment Mission was largely responsible for drafting this document; Douglas Jones and Tarvi Martens drafted the section on electronic voting.
• Expert Declaration / Holder et al v. McPherson et al Feb. 22, 2007. Why examination of redundant data is useful as an integrity check.
• Expert declaration / Americans for Safe Access et al v. County of Alameda Jan. 29, 2007 regarding the need to examine "audit logs" and other records in a recount. (A poor quality scan.)
• Letter on Postal Ballots to the Colorado Senate Majority Leader and Secretary of State, January 15, 2007.

• Perspectives on Electronic Voting A talk delivered at the Carter Center, Workshop on Developing an Effective Methodology for Observing Electronic Voting, November 2, 2006, Atlanta, Georgia. Pages 1 to 4 of the workshop report Developing a Methodology for Observing Electronic Voting, Carter Center, Oct. 11, 2007, are structured around on notes from this talk.
• The Trials and Tribulations of Electronic Voting and Voting Security, A Technical Perspective, 2 talks, presented at the University of South Carolina Cybersecurity Symposium, October 27, 2006, Columbia, South Carolina.
• Technologists as Political Reformers: Lessons from the Early History of Voting Machines, presented at the Society for the History of Technology annual conference, Las Vegas, October 13, 2006. Also presentation slides.
• The Trials and Tribulations of Electronic Voting slides for a talk presented at Ottumwa, Iowa, October 9, 2006, at the invitation of Indian Hills Community College and the Ottumwa League of Women Voters.
• Expert Report / Conroy et al v. Dennis September 5, 2006. This case, decided on September 22, 2006, found serious problems in Colorado's voting system certification process.
• Expert Declaration / Holder et al v. McPherson et al Aug. 7, 2006. regarding the security of the Diebold AccuVote-TSx as used in California. (I found a press report confirming that this declaration was filed with the court.)
• Expert Declaration / Holder et al v. McPherson et al June 30, 2006. regarding the security of the Diebold AccuVote-TSx as used in California. (Substantially the same as the above, I have no record to indicate why I prepared two such similar declarations.)
• Connecting Work on Threat Analysis to the Real World presented at VSRW 06, a workshop on Threat Analysis for Voting System Categories, June 8, 2006, George Washington University. Substantially the same content was presented at the League of Women Voters 2006 Convention Caucus on Electronic Voting, June 10, 2006, Minneapolis.
• Elections & Electronic Voting Machines -- Technology, technologists and public policy, slides for a talk before the IEEE Cedar Rapids Section, April 27, 2006.
• University of Iowa Student Elections: An After-Action Report, with Robert J. Hansen (lead author) and Tristan D. Thiede, March 31, 2006. Critical of the implementation of instant-runoff voting in the student election.
• Letter to Douglas Kellner, March 15, 2006; this is a followup to the material below.
• Regarding the Voting System Standards Proposed by the New York State Board of Elections in February 2006, submitted as public comment to the New York State Board of Elections, February 24, 2006; this is a followup to the material below.
• OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission final report on the 4 December 2005 Presidential Election in Kazakhstan (Official copy) published by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe - Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, February 21, 2006. This is a diplomatic document, individual authors are not attributed. The 17 member core observing team (official copy) was largely responsible for drafting this document; Herman Ruddijs and Douglas Jones drafted section VI on electronic voting (pages 9-10) and recommendations 15 through 19 (pages 28-29).
• Regarding the Voting System Standards Proposed by the New York State Board of Elections in December 2005, submitted by Larry Rockefeller as public comment to the New York State Board of Elections on their draft standard, January 23, 2006.
• Regarding the Optical Mark-Sense Vote Tabulators in Maricopa County prepared for the Arizona Senate Government Accountability and Reform Committee, Jan 12, 2006.

• Threats to Voting Systems (HTML) (PDF) (presentation slides) Position paper for the NIST workshop on Developing an Analysis of Threats to Voting Systems Gaithersberg MD, Oct 7, 2005.
• Chain Voting (PDF) Threat description for the NIST workshop on Developing an Analysis of Threats to Voting Systems Gaithersberg MD, Oct 7, 2005.
• Expert declaration / Americans for Safe Access et al v. County of Alameda May 5, 2005 regarding the need to examine "audit logs" and other records in a recount. (note, for some reason, I do not have a really good copy of this in my files.)
• Keeping Electronic Voting Honest Notes for a panel discussion at the AAAS Annual Meeting Washington DC, Feb 18, 2005.

• Affadavit / Yost v. National Voting Rights institute Dec. 15, 2004 regarding the Presidential recount in Ohio, Triad Election Systems and Hocking County.
• Reducing the Trusted Base (pdf) position statement for the NAS CSTB panel: A Framework for Understanding Electronic Voting, Washington DC, December 9, 2004.
• Evaluation of Voting Systems (PDF), with P.L. Vora, B. Adida, R. Bucholz, D. Chaum, D.L. Dill, D. Jefferson, W. Lattin, A.D. Rubin, M.I. Shamos, and M. Yung, Communications of the ACM, 47, 11 (Oct 2004) page 144.
• Statement to the Congressional Black Caucus, covered by CSPAN, Oct 7, 2004, and supplementary followup comments.
• Auditing Elections published in Communications of the ACM, 47, 10 (Oct 2004) pages 46-50.
• Misassessment of Security in Computer-Based Election Systems, Cryptobytes 7, 2 (Fall 2004).
• The European 2004 Draft E-Voting Standard: Some critical comments, posted to the web, Sept 29, 2004.
• Voting System Transparency and Security: Comments on the Sept 20 hearing submitted to the EAC Technical Guidelines Development Committee, Sept 23, 2004.
• Voting System Transparency and Security: The need for standard models Testimony before the EAC Technical Guidelines Development Committee, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, Sept 20, 2004.
• Observations and Recommendations on Pre-election testing in Miami-Dade County (PDF), Sept 9, 2004.
• Parallel Testing: A menu of options prepared for the Miami-Dade County Elections Department, Aug 12, 2004.
• Miami-Dade County Elections Department Logic and Accuracy Test, August 31 2004 Primary Election prepared for and then revised by the Miami-Dade County Elections Department, Aug 13, 2004.
• Declaration / Soubirous v. Riverside Aug. 10, 2004, that those who request a recount should be given access to "all relevant materials" including audit logs, records of pre-election tests and records of the chain of custody of machines and election results.
• Confusion of Myth and Fact in Maryland (PDF), July 18, 2004.
• Fair Elections under Military Occupation A modest proposal.
• Recommendations for the Conduct of Elections in Miami-Dade County using the ES&S iVotronic Syste (PDF), June 7, 2004.
• On Mark-Sense Scanning (PDF), presented at DIMACS Workshop on Electronic Voting -- Theory and Practice, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, May 27, 2004.
• Elections: Where We Are and Where We Must Go Written comments addressed to the Election Assistance Commission, May 5, 2004.
• Electronic Voting is Hard to Certify position statement for the NAS CSTB Workshop on Software Certification and Dependability, Washington DC, April 20, 2004.
• To the election officials of the State of Iowa position statement presented to the Iowa State Association of Counties, Des Moines, Iowa, March 17, 2004, at the invitation of Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver.
• Strengths and Weaknesses of Voting Systems II Inter-American Meeting on Electoral Technology, Panama City, Panama, March 1, 2004. (illustrations used for the talk.)
• To the concerned citizens and elected officials of the State of Ohio [PDF], Feb 26, 2004. A response to questions from legislators and legislative staff in Ohio.
• How Safe is our Voting System" Cornell College, Mount Vernon IA, January 8, 2004.

• Evaluation of Voting Technology Chapter 1 of Secure Electronic Voting by Dimitrius Gritzalis, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.
• Why trustworthy voting systems require institutionalized distrust First Symposium on Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, Dec 10, 2003.
• The Diebold AccuVote TS Should be Decertified, USENIX Security Symposium, Washington DC, Aug 6, 2003.
• The Case Against the Diebold AccuVote TS, USACM Workshop on Voter-Verifiable Election Systems, Denver, July 28, 2003.
• Comments on the IEEE Draft Voting System Standard, posted July 27, 2003.
• The Case of the Diebold FTP Site, posted July 21, 2003.
• E-voting: Are our defenses adequate to defend citizen rights? International Telecommunication Union Workshop on challenges, perspectives and standardization issues in E-Government, Geneva, June 6, 2003.
• Letter to California Secretary of State Kevin Shelly [PDF], Mar 20, 2003. A response to statements made to the ad hoc committee on DRE voting technology.

• Human Factors in Voting Technology, an Ethical Response, Council on Government Ethics Laws, Ottowa Ontario, Sept. 30, 2002.
• Handicapped Access to Mark-Sense Ballots, Invention disclosure, Sept 8, 2002.
• Trustworthy Systems on Untrusted Machines, Workshop on the Future of Voting Technology in a Networked Environment, Atlanta Georgia, June 4-5, 2002.
• Testimony before the Federal Election Commission, Washington DC, April 17, 2002.
• Added Comments on the FEC Voting System Standards Feb. 10, 2002.
• 2002 Workshop on Election Standards and Technology Washington DC, Jan. 31, 2002.
• Comments on the FEC's Dec. 13, 2001 Draft Voting System Standard Jan. 29, 2002.

• Comments on the Help America Vote Act of 2001
• National Conference on Governance Washington DC, Nov. 17, 2001.
• Comments on the FEC's July 10, 2001 Draft Voting System Standard July 13, 2001.
• Colloquium Slides U of Iowa CS department, June 14, 2001.
• Testimony before the House Committee on Science, Washington DC, May 22, 2001. (The record of the oral testimony at this hearing is House Science Committee publication number 107-20).
• Presentation to the League of Women Voters, Iowa City, May 16, 2001.
• Comments on the Iowa Election 2000 Report
• Response to "Internet Voting is no 'Magic Ballot' posted to comp.risks, Mar. 21, 2001.
• Receipts for Voting Machines posted to comp.risks, Jan. 29, 2001.
• Seminar outline U of Iowa ECE department, Jan 25, 2001.
• Testimony before the United States Civil Rights Commission, covered by CSPAN, Talahassee Florida, Jan 11, 2001.
  Followup submitted to the United States Civil Rights Commission, Feb 15, 2001.

• Election Reform in Iowa; slides for a presentation to the National Conference on Governance, National Civic League, Nov. 17, 2000, Washington, DC.
• Thoughts on computers in voting posted to comp.risks, election day, 2000.
• E-Voting -- Prospects and Problems presented at the Tau Beta Pi 31st Annual Paul D. Scholz Symposium, University of Iowa, April 13, 2000.
• A Critique on the California Internet Voting Task Force Report of January 2000, Mar. 20, 2000, revised Apr. 12, 2000.

Press Coverage

Other Sources of Information

Web Sites

Government

• The Federal Election Commission
• Swiss Federal Government E-voting links (in French, German or Italian).
• The Election Center
• NSF Conference on Network Voting
• Internet Policy Institute report on Internet Voting
• US Civil Rights Commission draft report on the Florida 2000 Election (alternate web site)
• Report of the The Governor's Select Task Force On Election Procedures, Standards and Technology (the Florida report)

Non Governmental Organizations

• Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
  See particularly the Winter 2001 CPSR Newsletter and its reading list. CPSR has been advocating increased oversight for the use of computers in elections for a long time. The papers in their 1993 Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference are must reading!

• Electronic Privacy Information Center
  See particularly their voting page, which has a good collection of links.

• The Voting Technology Initiative
  A joint venture of the Brennan Center for Justice and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to develop recommended election practices.

• California Voter Foundation
  See particularly their material on voting technology.

• The Open Voting Consortium
  A new (in 2003) group dedicated to bringing the benefits of a modified open-source development model to the world of elections.

• The National Committee for Voting Integrity
  A new (in 2003) group established to promote voter-verified balloting and to preserve privacy protections for elections in the United States.

• the Constitution Project
  See particularly their election reform initiative.

• Texas Safe Voting
  A Texas advocacy group.

• The Bell
  the Safevote Newsletter on Privacy, Security and Technology in Internet Voting
  (owned by Safevote Inc, but relatively noncommercial)

• Utah Count Votes!
  A Utah advocacy group.

• Stupid Security Measures for Brazil's E-Vote
  E-voting in Brazil has been held up to the world as a model for the future; this bilingual English/Portuguese site shows that the future may not be as rosy as E-voting proponents have claimed.

• The Administration and Cost of Elections Project
  in effect, this is a massive on-line multilingual textbook for election administrators.

• Election Data Services
  a company that sells redistricting and election support information. They are an important source for information about voting patterns in the United States.

• National Organization on Disability
  a good resource on handicapped access to polling places and voting systems.

• Voting Machines ProCon.org, see particularly their timeline of voting history.

Voting Machine and Voting Software Vendors (alphabetical)

The usual disclaimer: Inclusion in this list does not constitute an endorsement. If your favorite vendor is not listed, drop me a line and I'll include it.

• Federal Election Commission list of known vendors

• Danaher Controls (Guardian Voting Systems)
• Diversified Dynamics Inc
• Election Systems and Software
• Fidlar Doubleday Inc
• Global Election Systems Inc
• Hart InterCivic
• Microvote
• N.V. Nederlandsche Apparatenfabriek "Nedap"
• Safevote
• Sequoia Pacific
• Shoup Voting Solutions
• Software Improvements Australian open-source DRE system.
• Surveys International
• TrueBallot
• UniLect
• Vogue Election Systems
• VoteHere.net
• WebVote Inc
• Worldwide Election Systems Inc

Academia

• David Dill's Campaign for Voter Verifiable Ballots
• Rebecca Mercuri's Electronic Voting Page
• Lorrie Cranor's (extensive) Electronic Voting Hot List
• Anne-Marie Oostveen's index of voting sites
• MIT Caltech joint project
• The Berkeley social science data archive
• Bob Kibrick's Statement on voting

Activists

• Bev Harris' Black Box Voting hard hitting journalism, if a bit sensationalistic.

Historical

• Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1910

Build your arcane vocabulary: Psephology is the study of political elections.

As of Jan 16, 2006, Google found 1,300 links to this collection of material from outside the University of Iowa, this compares to 372 on Nov 8, 2004, and 279 on Dec 15, 2003.