Government is something we often consider something we really can’t get involved in as average citizens outside of public office. But with the recent grass roots campaign that President Obama orchestrated, it goes to show that we as citizens do have the ability to affect influence in government. One of the major steps in creating a more open government is establishing a standardized set of guidelines and rules for digital voting in our country.
Recently at the OSU Open Source Lab, we’ve been in talking with the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV) with hopes that we can help host some of their sites and infrastructure. What and who exactly are they? They’re a non-partisan and non-profit organization based in Silicon Valley that strives to try and fix many of the issues that we face today in digital voting. They have three primary goals.
- Resolving the root causes for the problems that exist in voting technology today,
- Developing guidelines for assessing, testing, and verifying whether an existing or new digital voting device, system, or service is truly high assurance and high veracity, and
- Defining, designing, and building a reference implementation of an open source high assurance digital voting system and service.
Excited? Interested in learning more? Live in the Portland, Oregon area? You’re in luck! The OSL and Portland Open Source Entrepreneurs (POSSE) is hosting an event at Cubespace this Wednesday from 6-8PM with a presentation by the OSDV founders. Their presentation will:
- Introduce the project, its motivation, founding, and development efforts to date
- Walk through the TrustTheVote technology road map and review major projects underway
- Discuss development philosophies and approaches including experience-driven design and test-driven agile development
- Review opportunities for systems architects, software developers, SDQA/test specialists, and user experience designers
- Cover plans to expand the volunteer developer teams, future opportunities for senior members of technical staff, and opportunities for you to get involved
Get Involved! See you there!
