History

The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) began with Alan Dechert's November 2000 idea for correcting the voting system. It has grown from a proposal to develop a pilot project in one county in California to a proposal for an in-depth nationwide study. Beyond that, the OVC is being built from the ground up as an international consortium.

Chronology

The most recent events are at the top of the list.

November 2003

Charles Cleveland becomes OVC Webmaster along with Matteo Giacomazzi of Italy.

26 October 2003

The Forum on Electronic Voting takes place at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

8 October 2003

A proposal is submitted to the National Science Foundation. The team is lead by Dr. Arthur Keller of the University of California at Santa Cruz, and includes Doug Jones of the University of Iowa and Arnie Urken of Stevens Tech. Peter Maggs of the University of Illinois is included as a consultant on accessibility issues for voters with disabilities.

September 2003

Jan Karrman joins the team. Jan is a senior research engineer at Uppsala University in Sweden.

30 July 2003

The first meeting of demo development management takes place at the home of Dr. Arthur Keller in Palo Alto, California. In attendance are Alan Dechert, Dr. Keller, Adrianne Wang, and by phone, David Mertz.

July 2003

Professor Arthur Keller contacts Alan Dechert about the voting project, after being referred to him by David Dill. Dr. Keller suggests a demonstration, and he sets up a voting-project email list.

Adrianne (Yu) Wang suggests EVM2003 as a project name and establishes the project on SourceForge. She also suggests that we have a web-based demo as well as a standalone.

David Mertz, of Massachusetts, and many others, join the team.

June 2003

Ed Cherlin contacts Alan Dechert after being referred to him by David Dill. He suggests building open source voting software with the Python language and using SourceForge as host.

May 2003

Alan Dechert opens dialogs with Doug Jones, Arnie Urken, and others interested in getting funding for a nationwide voting study.

25 April 2003

Alan Dechert meets with Mohan Paturi, Computer Science Chair of the University of California at San Diego.

April 2003

Alan Dechert begins a dialog with a group of Austrialians who have developed their own open source voting software for use with personal computers.

March 2003

Alan Dechert begins a dialog with David Dill, after Warren Slocum tells him about David Dill's efforts.

16 January 2002

California State Senator Don Perata redirects his funding request of 08 May 2001 for a comprehensive study of current and prospective voting systems to (CITRIS).

He again emphasizes the need to explore alternative voting systems and to work with the private sector to develop new voting technologies.

To view his letter to CITRIS Director Ruzena Bajcsy, click here.

11 December 2001

Warren Slocum, Chief of Elections for San Mateo County, also writes to UCB Chancellor Robert Berdahl in support of the Open Source Voting project proposal.

To view his letter, click here.

05 December 2001

Roy Saltman, formerly of NIST, writes to UCB Chancellor Robert Berdahl in support of funding for the Open Source Voting project proposal.

To view his letter, click here.

16 November 2001

Professor Henry Brady, cited above, and Alan Dechert meet with Ruzena Bajcsy, head of CITRIS, and Jim Demmel, CITRIS' Chief Scientist, along with Beth Burnside, UCB Vice Chancellor, and Bob Price, UCB Associate Vice Chancellor.

27 August 2001

After funding for the Open Source Voting project is dropped from the California state budget, Professor Henry Brady of the University of California at Berkeley, and Alan Dechert, meet at Berkeley in the morning with University of California Chancellor Berdahl, and at Sacramento in the afternoon with members of Governor Grey Davis' staff. These meetings lead to speculation about possible funding by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).

08 May 2001

California State Senator Don Perata requests a budget augmentation to fund a comprehensive study of current and prospective voting systems.

He emphasizes the need to explore alternative voting systems and to work with the private sector to develop new voting technologies.

To view his letter to then Senator Steve Peace, click here.

02 May 2001

Professor Henry Brady, Director of the Survey Research Center (SRC) of the University of California at Berkeley and Alan Dechert join forces in a proposal to apply SRC resources and relevant experience in the development of an inexpensive PC-based open-source voting system.

Professor Brady and Alan Dechert present their proposal to California State Senator Don Perata's office, and a few days later, they meet with Governor Gray Davis' staffer, Bill Lloyd.

April 2001

California State Senator Don Perata, shortly before becoming chair of the Senate Elections Committee, responds favorably to Alan Dechert's idea as presented by staffer Chris Lehman. Lehman introduces Alan Dechert to Sandi Polka of Senator Burton's office, who suggested an academic partnership so the State can provide funding.

27 March 2001

Curtis Gans lends his support with the words, "... your method does, I believe, make possible a verifiable and user friendly system cheaply."

22 March 2001

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich seeks further information about Alan Dechert's Open Voting proposal, in order to determine its feasibility for Los Angeles County.

To view Mr. Antonovich's letter to Recorder-Registrar/County Clerk Conny McCormack asking her to contact Alan Dechert for the information, click here.

March 2001

There are many meetings with California State Assembly Members and Senators, and their staff.

Roy Saltman of Maryland, formerly of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), takes an interest in the project, and writes letters of support in April and December of 2001.

13 February 2001

Alan Dechert first meets with the staff of the Sacramento County election officials. Also present is Chris Reynolds from the office of the California Secretary of State.

At the meeting, Mr. Dechert presents a proposal titled, "The Voter Certified Ballot", together with supporting material.

(To follow the link, you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader 5 or later, available free from Adobe.)

17 January 2001

Alan Dechert attends a hearing conducted by the Election Committee of the California State Assembly.

12 December 2000

Alan Dechert opens the first discussions of his Open Source voting system on the Visual dBASE newsgroup. He finds some developers interested in working on a development project for just the demonstration software. To obtain support for the whole project, he decides to pursue state, local, and foundation funding for a pilot project and comprehensive study.

November, 2000

Alan Dechert works out the conceptual design for a simple PC based Open Source voting system.