Keeping an Eye on the Ball...
Focus. That’s the real job of those of us chartered withstewardship of the OSDV Foundation. There are other important jobs for other folks - lobbying Congress for election reform, publishing substantive policy position papers, performing research, and commenting on proposed legislation or regulation – all are important aspects of advancing election reform, but more or less consist of talking, not making.
That’s the distinction that makes the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation different from many other organizations concerned with voting – our work is to make breakthrough digital voting technology that you can see, touch, and try. And that work is our focus. You can read and learn all over our online community about these real and demonstrative results we are steadfastly committed to delivering. So let me add a comment about that “C” word.
When we began this effort over a year ago, we determined that in a digital society a digital democracy is a given, and that for all the problems it has so far presented, technology is not going away.
So, we knew right then that it was important for everyone, and particularly experts, to talk about what is broken, risky, and wrong with voting technology. And we also knew that it was time to actually do something about it. And we also knew the answer lie in tackling hard problems of how to make digital voting work right.
With that, it became easy for us to depart the profit-centric play of new technology business development for the non-profit world. And the simple reason is that we are not intending to lobby Congress on your behalf, or try to convince the world of our views. Instead, we’re going to make real things and put them out for the world to see, touch, and try. That’s the ball we’re keeping our eyes trained on.
And we have a DNA-level commitment to ensuring that the solutions – which we know can be produced – are created and held in a transparent manner for the public benefit, using the best practices of high assurance engineering and open source methods of development.
I mean after all, in a digital democracy the cornerstone is how we vote. And voting technology is something we feel strongly should be held in the public trust… built by and for the citizens. What do you think? Do you agree its time to actually do something?
Leave me a comment and I’ll address it. And if you join our Community, you’re comments will be part of the conversation immediately.
Cheers
GAM|out
