Skip to content ↓

MIT experts speak up on voting technology, electoral politics

"Is the testing of voting machines satisfactory? No. Are the design standards appropriate? No. Are they all improving? Yes. But do we have good mechanisms for improving them? No." MIT professor and Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project (VTP) member Ted Selker. San Mateo County Times, 11/5/2004.

"I expected much worse. Huge improvements have been made." Ted Selker, on the use of electronic voting machines during the Nov. 2 election. New Scientist.com, 11/4/2004.

"At the moment, the polls have distinguished themselves for telling us in a sophisticated way what would happen. I have a feeling none of them have anything to be ashamed about." MIT professor and statistics expert Arnold Barnett. Bloomberg.com, 11/3/2004.

"We are going to hear about every single problem because of all the reporting and all the people watching. And we've seen problems." Ted Selker. Tampa Bay Online, 11/2/2004.

"There are more demands on poll workers than there used to be, and that's causing stress in the system." MIT political science professor and Caltech-MIT VTP member Stephen Ansolabehere. National Geographic News, 11/1/2004.

"It is unclear that any technology can prevent someone from screwing up." Ted Selker. ZDNet News, 11/1/2004.

"It's my job to be completely paranoid about elections. Because the stakes in presidential elections are so high, the motivation to do evil is also quite high, and so we have a plan for every possible scenario." Ben Adida, MIT Ph.D. student in cryptography and information security and member of the Caltech-MIT VTP. Boston Magazine, Oct. 2004.

"Better technology is improving the functioning of democracy." MIT political science professor and Caltech-MIT VTP researcher Charles Stewart. South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10/25/2004.

"Using different systems raises profound questions about just what equal protection means." Stephen Ansolabehere, referring to voting systems. New York Times, 10/13/2004 (registration).

"Electronic voting machines offer the safest voting method currently available - provided that their use is carefully supervised and monitored." Ted Selker. Newsday, 10/10/2004.

"This complex process is so vital to our democracy that problems with it are as noteworthy as engineering faults in a nuclear power plant." Ted Selker, on voting and vote-counting processes. Scientific American, 9/17/2004.

Related Links

Related Topics

More MIT News