SEAS Highlights Archives

Scantegrity Makes Elections History

Election history was made in Takoma Park, MD, on November 3, 2009. For the first time anywhere in the world, voters had the ability to independently audit the election tally. About 1,700 voters used the Scantegrity voting system to cast votes for the positions of mayor and city council members. The Scantegrity count has been confirmed by a hand count, within the expected margin between hand counts and automated counts. Voters have until November 6th to determine if the confirmation numbers obtained on their ballots are missing from the website, after which anyone can audit data made public by Scantegrity.

Scantegrity has been developed by GW Professor Poorvi Vora, of the Department of Computer Science, and graduated doctoral student Stefan Popoveniuc, in collaboration with several other universities. Public domain efforts to prototype this class of voting systems have become somewhat widespread (about eight such protoyped systems exist) after the first one, Citizen Verified Voting, was prototyped entirely at GW by Professor Vora's doctoral student, Ben Hosp.

Media covered the process in print and via radio.  Online articles appeared in Wired magazine, and Computerworld.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/scantegrity/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140285/E_voting_system_lets_voters_verify_their_ballots_are_counted?taxonomyId=1

WAMU radio provided the following coverage:
Takoma Park Voters Use New System
http://wamu.org/audio/nw/09/11/n4091104-29958.asx (Microsoft Media Player) http://wamu.org/audio/nw/09/11/n4091104-29958.ram (Real Audio)

New Voting Technology Makes Debut In Takoma Park http://wamu.org/audio/nw/09/11/n24091103-29954.ram
http://wamu.org/audio/nw/09/11/n24091103-29954.asx

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