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SPECIAL (AND TIMELY) SEMINAR.....



WHATS HAPPENING IN FLORIDA?
        Bugs in Computerized Voting


MICHAEL SHAMOS
Principal Systems Scientist
Co-Director, Institute for eCommerce
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University

Wednesday, 15 November 2000
Wean Hall 7500 -- 4:30 pm


ABSTRACT
********
The Presidential election has drawn a lot of attention to the methods
of computerized voting in Florida. The purpose of this talk is to
explain how computers are used in voting in the United States, why the
process is not simple, why recounts, even in punched-card elections,
can take weeks and why when a deck of ballots are counted the totals
are never the same twice in a row. We will discuss voting fraud,
vote-buying, ballot stuffing, the difference between precinct count
and central count systems and what happens to the ballots between the
time they are cast and when they are finally counted. The overall
objective is to clarify exactly what computers do and do not do
in the American voting process.

BIO
***
Michael Shamos has been an examiner of computerized voting systems for
Pennsylvania and Texas since 1980 and has studied over 100 different
voting products, including the ones just used in Florida. His
widely cited paper on voting system examination, written in 1993,
is available at:

      http://www.cpsr.org/conferences/cfp93/shamos.html



NOTE: The lecture will be broadcast live over CMU cable.
      Will be immediately available at the University Library
      site: http://www.ulib.org