Voting Project Needs Python People

[Alan Dechert]

We've decided to go with Python for the demo of the voting machine I
described on this forum yesterday.  Thanks to all of you for your feedback.

We have an excellent team together.  We're looking for a few good Python
coders willing to volunteer for this free open source project.  It will be
on sourceforge.net later today.

I can't offer you any money right now but I think it will be a good
opportunity for Python users and the Python community in general.  It's
likely to be fairly high-profile and will gain significant exposure for
Python.

Here are some of the people involved:

University of California Santa Cruz computer science graduate, Adrianne Yu
Wang will be the project administrator and lead the project.

http://home.earthlink.net/~adechert/adrianne_resume.doc

She will get help from Jack Walther, a UCSC graduate student and big Python
fan.

http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~jdw/

They will be advised by computer science professors Doug Jones (U of Iowa)
and Arthur Keller (UCSC)

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/

http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~ark/

Ed Cherlin will also act in a mainly advisory role but will assist with the
design of the project and documentation.

http://home.earthlink.net/~adechert/cherlin_resume.doc

We anticipate that a successful demo will help expedite funding for the
overall project which is aimed at implementing a uniform transparent voting
system.  We have very prominent academics interested in the project from
many of the top universities around the country: Political scientists,
lawyers, economists, computer scientists, and psychologists.

Stanford computer scientist David Dill has been helpful (he referred Ed
Cherlin and Prof Keller to me, among others).  Professor Dill has gotten
involved in voting modernization issues in a big way.

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.asp

Henry Brady was my co-author for the original UC Berkeley proposal for
California.

http://home.earthlink.net/~adechert/src_proposal.html

Professor Brady is widely known for his papers and books on voting systems.
The main author of the Caltech-MIT reports from their voting project, Steve
Ansolabehere was one of Henry's students when Henry taught at Harvard.
Henry has two Ph.D.s from MIT.

http://www.apsanet.org/new/2003chairs.cfm

We are pulling together a great voting modernization projects.  It's an
opportunity to get in on it at an early stage.  It should be rewarding for
you, your community, and democracy.

Please contact me if you want to join us.

-- Alan Dechert  916-791-0456
adechert at earthlink.net