CDL- 3/4/22 - Voting Technology

Abstract:

Traditionally most votes are lost in registration, voting ballot design problems, and polling place operations, causing long lines and possibly mail-in ballot fraud. This talk will describe voting-process problems and technological problems, and some possible solutions for voting improvement.

Voting disenfranchisement is much higher for people with perceptual, physical, and cognitive disabilities. More than 14% of registered voters are in danger of increased errors due to dyslexia, and more than 6.5% due to short term memory problems. We will describe and demonstrate technologies we are making that help disabled people and improve voting universally as well.


About the Speaker:

Dr. Ted Selker is an entrepreneur inventor who also mentors innovation. Ted spent five years as director of Considerate Systems research at Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley and in developing the campus’s research mission. Prior to that, Ted spent ten years as an associate professor at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he created the Context-Aware Computing group, co-directed the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, and directed the Industrial Design Intelligence future for a product design project. Prior to that, his successes at targeted product creation and enhancement at IBM earned him the role of IBM Fellow.

Ted’s work birthed successful products ranging from notebook computers to operating systems. It accumulated numerous awards, patents, and papers and has often been featured in the press. Ted is co-recipient of the Computer Science Policy Leader Award for Scientific American 50, the American Association for People with Disabilities Thomas Paine Award for his work on voting technology, and the Telluride Tech Fest Award.