Honest Voting

Computer scientist and founder of the Association for Computing Machinery’s U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) Barbara Simons has been appointed to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Board of Advisors, which oversees voting and technology standards. (The press release says, “She will hold a seat that is allocated for science and technology professionals.” I assume this is the empty seat on the EAC Technical Guidelines and Development Committee; neither the EAC or the USACM websites are more specific.)  The Election Assistance Commission is pitifully underfunded and understaffed considering how much it’s responsible for, but having Simons there has to be good.

Dr. Simons is an encryption and privacy expert who previously served as president of ACM. Simons was a member of the National Workshop on Internet Voting, convened at the request of President Clinton, and participated on the Security Peer Review report that resulted in the cancellation of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Internet voting project because of security concerns. Simons also co-chaired the ACM study of statewide registered voter databases, and served on a subcommittee of the President’s Export Council for Encryption. Notably, she and fellow USACM member Ed Felten testified before Congress in September 2006 about the necessity for voter-verified paper trails in the election process.

Simons was one of three computer scientists behind the “Diebold Bombshell” announcement, a denunciation of the technical flaws inherent in voting machines from Diebold (recently rebranded as Premier). She is currently co-authoring a book on voting machines with University of Iowa computer scientist Douglas W. Jones.

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