ISRI Seminar Series

The PhD Program in Computation, Organizations & Society and Cylab Present:

Electronic Voting in the Courts: How should judges evaluate software?

Michael I. Shamos
Distinguished Career Professor, ISRI

Monday, 13 Sept. 2004, 12 pm, NSH 3305

Relatively recently, computer security experts have begun to look at
direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines and have pronounced
them fatally insecure, predicting dire consequences if they are used
in elections. This claim is made despite the fact that DRE machines
have been used in increasing numbers for 25 years without a proven
incident of tampering. Concerned activists have taken the matter to
the courts to try to stop state governments from using the machines,
forcing judges to become technical arbiters.

This talk focuses on the recent case of Schade v. Maryland State Board
of Elections, which was decided on September 1, 2004, in which the
speaker was an expert witness. We will first look at the technical
issues in the case, then discuss the balancing necessary before a
court can order a radical change to the status quo, and finally
analyze the judge's reasoning in the face of contradictory testimony
to decide whether he reached the right result. You can read the
court's opinion in advance
(http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos/schade.pdf) and
decide for yourself.

Michael Shamos runs the technology side of the MSEC program. His
research interests are in digital libraries, electronic payment
systems, electronic voting, electronic negotiation, Internet law and
policy, and experimental mathematics. The speaker was statutory
examiner of computerized voting systems from 1980-2000 and has worked
for the governments of Pennsylvania, Texas, Delaware, West Virginia,
Nevada, Virginia and Maryland. He testified before three Congressional
committees on electronic voting in 2004 and was an expert witness in
the voting cases of Wexler v. Lepore (Florida), American Association
of People with Disabilities v. Shelley (California) and the Schade
case in Maryland.


Lunch will be provided


For the complete ISRI seminar schedule, see 
http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/isri-seminar/