Wishing. For you and yours to have a peaceful holiday – regardless of your purpose of celebrating some rest and recuperation as the year end nears – that would be my wish today on this Christian holiday.

Being of Judeo-Christian descent (my Father’s side having Jewish roots and my Mother’s side having Catholic-Christian basis) this month is a celebration of the end of one year and the start of a new. My family always honored and respected celebrations of both houses. So on this day, I’d like to share my wish-list, that as a child, I would’ve created for our magical character, Santa.

I’m wishing for just a few things (contrast with what I’ll have to say regarding resolutions come next weekend :-)

First and foremost I wish for an opportunity to be in the middle of the conversation about HOW America votes, especially as our national election draws near.

And I wish for a couple of other things.

For instance, I wish that we may be sufficiently funded to complete a couple of essential projects necessary to start building requirements for a new generation of digital voting technology. One such project (we will be speaking more of in the New Year) is a massive Voting Observance effort.  During next year’s general election the OSDV Foundation intends to have a nationwide volunteer effort to observe polling places in operation – gathering as much written and photographic evidence as we can – cataloging all activities, compiling it on the web site for all to view and comment, and ultimately using the results to catalyze the development of requirements for various aspects of the user experience in voting.

I also wish for the OSDV Foundation to be blessed with the resources of the very best user experience designers to help in defining what we hope will be (to borrow another’s phrase) an “insanely great” user interface for interacting with ballots and casting votes.

So on this day, I am wishing, and I’m dreaming. Dr. Robert Goddard, a noted U.S. rocket scientist once said, “The dreams of yesterday are the hopes of today, and the realities tomorrow.” And my late Mother wrote to me once, “When dreams become their people, people become their dreams.” I wish that my dreams are someday realities, and that my Mother’s encouragement become reality for the OSDV Foundation.

Happy “Holi-daze!”

Thanks!

GAM|out