The topic of "open source" (the information technology industry phrase for "publicly available") has become a hot, at times confusing, and even contentious topic in the domain of election technology.  It is time for an intellectually honest pragmatic examination of the potential for open source to bring about innovation in the area of election technology.  Historically inherent in our name, OSET (“Oh-Set”) are a pair of words, “open” and “source.”  We have always maintained that open source is neither necessary nor sufficient for higher integrity, lower cost, easier to use election administration systems.  However, publicly available technology (i.e., open source) is an important ingredient to ensuring transparency and trust in the technology.  In the decade since the Institute’s founding, “open source” as a phrase used in conjunction with voting systems has grown to be a provocative and even in some limited situations, controversial topic.  It should not be. Therefore, we believe it is essential to understand what exactly open source technology is and is not; can and cannot do; and the appropriate uses of open source methods and means in mission-critical government computing, particularly election administration, which has become a matter of national security.  In this paper, Dr. Clifford Wulfman, a senior member of technical staff at the OSET Institute, and John Sebes, co-founder and CTO, explain just that. (Click thru the title above for more and to download the paper.)

Online Voter Registration (“OVR”) is a way to improve the administration (and operational efficiency) of U.S. election voter rolls by automating the existing voter-registration process, thereby providing convenience for voters and cost savings for election officials (“EOs”). Designed and implemented right, it is a perfect “cloud-based” service for election administration.  One of the essential challenges to implementing OVR is integrating new OVR technology with pre-existing Voter-Records Management Systems (“VRMS”) technology that itself was never designed to operate in an open Internet environment. This paper provides a detailed description of a "reference architecture" for OVR system deployment and integration with pre-existing VRMS technology (Click thru for more and to download the paper). 

This Briefing provides you a thorough review of the technology infrastructure of election administration and operation.  We address its "criticality" and what is required for it to be treated as such, and assess the challenges of official designation, as well as the immediate and longer-term challenges to protecting this vital aspect of our democracy.  There have been a number of helpful and important reports and white papers produced recently about America’s election security.  The OSET Institute’s CDI Briefing is the only one of its kind, researched and developed by election technology specialists with over a decade of experience in election and voting systems engineering to increase integrity, lower costs, and improve usability. This Briefing is intended to be an educational resource on the technology challenges, with a minimum of techno-babble. While we offer recommendations, this paper is not intended to be a policy strategy, although we hope it will inform those discussions. (Click thru for a Foreword by former NSA Dep. Director, William P. Crowell and to download the Briefing).