After the success of the ITIF’s Future of Voting panel, we were surprised by the nature of NPR’s radio coverage. From our perspective the report greatly distorted the tone and focus of the event in an apparent effort to concoct a sense of controversy.

Aspects of the coverage we felt were misleading:

• The title of the report does not reflect the focus. Why would people who oppose paper ballots present a system with…. a paper ballot? The summary of the report is tangential to the event. This event was about new voting research and presented a range of solutions; internet, opscan and DRE based.
• The report begins with a shot directed at the ITIF for AV “technical difficulties.” How is this newsworthy, really? Maybe the reporter could have interviewed the House Administration Committee room’s AV guy and ask him why he didn’t show up to give us access to the equipment. To the ITIF’s credit, they had a backup screen and projector.
• David Dill is interviewed and purported by NPR as providing the “controversy” component, yet was not present at the event. He hasn’t seen the systems nor did he offer any directed criticism about them.
• His comments seemed to be included out of context. Every system presented had a paper ballot capability.¹ One focused on overseas voting, and another on usability issues. Our system is an opscan add-on, improving the type of system that David is known to prefer.
• Arguably these technologies are not “on the horizon.” Each group demoed working prototypes at the event and are working with counties to use these systems in public elections.

Stay tuned for more details about the forum. Tomorrow, we will be posting a longer recap with pictures.

¹ - Prime III prefers a “video audit trail” that they use in a special way AND have empirical evidence indicating it is faster to audit. Our understanding is that they have a paper trail option built-in already, but if not there’s nothing preventing it and they do not oppose it.