1/ Hello @euroclyde and @4aPeoplesParty ...Thanks again for your generous support. We believe the @TrustTheVote Project is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." It is the only way, from our view, to restore trust in elections technology. THREAD/
2/ The challenge is lack of innovation in a failing commercial market for election and voting technology that's truly Verifiable, Accurate, Secure, and Transparent in process (the so-called "VAST Mandate"). Thus, our nonprofit, nonpartisan cause is to...
3/ ...increase confidence in elections and their outcomes, in order to preserve the operational continuity of democracies (worldwide) and protect from attacks on critical democracy infrastructure. Thus, our mission is to...
4/ ...increase integrity, lower cost, and improve usability of election technology (and in so doing potentially increase participation). To that challenge of point 2/ of this thread, there is absolutely no business incentive for the commercial vendors to invest in the required...
5/ ...research & development to deliver truly fault-tolerant, hack-intolerant, mission critical, application-specific, component-based election technology. Their customers (county governments) can't afford to pay what they would charge because...
6/ ...state and county budgets for voting technology "twist in the political winds of appropriations" (as our leadership likes to say). But solving for the inherent insecurity of PC-based voting technology is a moral imperative. So what to do? We think its simple...
7/ ...instead of demanding, expecting, or trying to compel this failing industry to build higher integrity, lower cost, easier to use voting devices, let's remove that heavy lifting of research & development off the shoulders of those remaining...
8/ ...commercial vendors who can't make that R&D investment "pencil out." Instead, let's make that innovation a "public digital works project;" produce the required technology innovations and make them public assets. This will rejuvenate the market for delivery of...
9/ ...finished production ready and certified voting systems. The key here is that the technology becomes a public asset: of, by, and for the people. So, your support (and the support of everyone) is vital because that's what makes this work truly publicly available...
10/ ...and that's hugely important because then we all can legitimately say this is the people's technology to ensure the people's voices are heard: one-voice, one-vote, where we can trust that ballots are counted as cast using evidence-based, verifiable...
11/ ...accurate, secure, & transparent technology. The key to our work is understanding that its about way more than just writing software that's open source. Its about gaining tacit approval from election officials who decide what they want to use by incorporating...
12/ ...their requirements, specs, and feedback. Its also about understanding how to re-invent this infrastructure to be generational and able to support evolving means of casting & counting, and the regulatory nuances of election administration. Its also about...
13/ ...solving some difficult computer science problems in order to marry a trusted software layer on to inherently untrusted hardware. For instance, look into these concepts: "trusted boot," "hardware attestation," "secure enclave," "TPM," or "RISC-V" and you'll start...
14/ ...to see that this is a way more challenging (and imperative) task than writing software. And we're partnering with some amazing computer science researchers & developers with our internal team to deliver higher integrity, lower cost, easier to use technology through...
15/ ...user centered design + security centric engineering practices typically only found in high assurance computing environments because this is critical democracy infrastructure; of, by, and for we the people. But one final point (to respond to @euroclyde comments to us...
16/ The Platform of election administration is only one of the 5-Ps (the other 4: People, Process, Policy, & Politics). Increasing confidence in elections and their outcomes ultimately requires addressing them all. And even at that, election administration is...
17/ ...only 1 of 4 pillars on which democracy is sustained, especially in the U.S. Our co-founder, @gam1357 has a thesis about the potential collapse of American democracy before we reach its 250th birthday in 2026, if we don't resolve their failings, and here they are...
18/ The 4 pillars of sustaining democracy are: 1) Campaign Finance (who/what is actually controlling Congress); 2) Term Limits (its a service-deployment not a career); 3) Election Platform (this thread); & 4) Re-districting (voters choose their representatives; not vice-versa)...
19/ ...Unless we, the people, work together to resolve those four corners, American democracy ultimately will not survive. We're focused on the 3rd; we hope sensible campaign finance, reasonable term limits, and fair and balanced redistricting will be resolved. Thus...
20/ THANK YOU for your support of our work to build the peoples' election administration technology that can ensure verifiable, accurate, & secure elections. It is a moral imperative and the one thing we all CAN absolutely effect. Every tax-deductible gift helps. /END
