E-Voting Technology | Technology and Society Forum

Rebecca Mercuri, PhD, and Douglas Kellner
New York City Board of Elections Commissioner and an attorney
Sep 23, 2004, 4-5:30 pm, second floor ballroom of the new Campus Center

Abstract

Electronic voting expert, Rebecca Mercuri, PhD, and New York City Board of Elections Commissioner Douglas Kellner, an attorney, will explore e-voting technologies at NJIT’s Technology and Society Forums on Sept. 23, 2004, 4-5:30 p.m., second floor ballroom of the new Campus Center.

In the rush to solve the problems that emerged in Florida during the 2000 election dispute, electronic voting systems have been deployed in unprecedented numbers throughout the country. Mercuri and Kellner will discuss how the vulnerabilities of these systems to insider and outsider attacks create new opportunities for large scale vote fraud in the 2004 election and beyond.

Mercuri became an overnight celebrity during the media frenzy that ensued when the 2000 US presidential election ended in a dead heat. Mercuri gave testimony to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Bush v. Gore court case and has since provided her expertise to US congressional committees and to the British government. A former research fellow at the Kennedy School for Government, Mercuri is a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She writes a quarterly column "Security Watch" for the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (www.notablesoftware.com).

Kellner is the Democratic elections commissioner from Manhattan, having served on the NYC Board of Elections since 1993. Although he has opposed the replacement of NYC lever voting machines with electronic voting machines, he has promoted new technology for scanning absentee and provisional ballots. In their September 23rd NJIT presentation, both Kellner and Mercuri will suggest positive alternatives to the current e-voting technology..