Voting Project Needs Python People

[Harry George]

"Alan Dechert" <adechert at earthlink.net> writes:

> We've decided to go with Python for the demo of the voting machine I
> described on this forum yesterday.  Thanks to all of you for your feedback.
> 
> We have an excellent team together.  We're looking for a few good Python
> coders willing to volunteer for this free open source project.  It will be
> on sourceforge.net later today.
> 
> I can't offer you any money right now but I think it will be a good
> opportunity for Python users and the Python community in general.  It's
> likely to be fairly high-profile and will gain significant exposure for
> Python.
> 
> Here are some of the people involved:
> 
> University of California Santa Cruz computer science graduate, Adrianne Yu
> Wang will be the project administrator and lead the project.
> 
> http://home.earthlink.net/~adechert/adrianne_resume.doc
> 
> She will get help from Jack Walther, a UCSC graduate student and big Python
> fan.
> 
> http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~jdw/
> 
> They will be advised by computer science professors Doug Jones (U of Iowa)
> and Arthur Keller (UCSC)
> 
> http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/
> 
> http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~ark/
> 
> Ed Cherlin will also act in a mainly advisory role but will assist with the
> design of the project and documentation.
> 
> http://home.earthlink.net/~adechert/cherlin_resume.doc
> 
> We anticipate that a successful demo will help expedite funding for the
> overall project which is aimed at implementing a uniform transparent voting
> system.  We have very prominent academics interested in the project from
> many of the top universities around the country: Political scientists,
> lawyers, economists, computer scientists, and psychologists.
> 
> Stanford computer scientist David Dill has been helpful (he referred Ed
> Cherlin and Prof Keller to me, among others).  Professor Dill has gotten
> involved in voting modernization issues in a big way.
> 
> http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.asp
> 
> Henry Brady was my co-author for the original UC Berkeley proposal for
> California.
> 
> http://home.earthlink.net/~adechert/src_proposal.html
> 
> Professor Brady is widely known for his papers and books on voting systems.
> The main author of the Caltech-MIT reports from their voting project, Steve
> Ansolabehere was one of Henry's students when Henry taught at Harvard.
> Henry has two Ph.D.s from MIT.
> 
> http://www.apsanet.org/new/2003chairs.cfm
> 
> We are pulling together a great voting modernization projects.  It's an
> opportunity to get in on it at an early stage.  It should be rewarding for
> you, your community, and democracy.
> 
> Please contact me if you want to join us.
> 
> -- Alan Dechert  916-791-0456
> adechert at earthlink.net
> 
> 
> 

Please post the sourceforge link when it is set up.  

I was curious why http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html wasn't
mentioned.  I had the impression that was an early (and continuing)
portal for these issues.

Is the intent to do opensource all the way to commodity chips?  Else a
proprietary BIOS could be the weak link.

-- 
harry.g.george at boeing.com
6-6M31 Knowledge Management
Phone: (425) 294-8757