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>> Matthew Masterson: And thank you.
Good afternoon.
I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Again, my name is Matthew Masterson; I'm the Deputy Elections Administrator
for the Ohio Secretary of State's Office.
For those of you who don't know, Ohio is this sleepy little state in the Midwest
and not really very relevant in most elections.
It's pretty quite right now.
[Laughter] I love this; I love this discussion and I love the opportunity
to be here particularly as an elections administrator.
I think a lot of times us as elections administrators tend to silo ourselves
with each other, and then the other communities whether its activist community,
cyber community does a little bit of that as well,
and so I appreciate Verified Voting allowing me to come and talk about this.
I'm not going to provide a sexy Pac-Man video; sorry.
I'm just not going to have that.
The part that sticks in my crawl the most being from Columbus,
home of the Ohio State University, is the Michigan fight song at the end...
[laughter]...that's a real burner.
But what I hope to address for you and talk to you
about is the position election officials are in, in this conversation and sort of our reality
as election administrators in this conversation.
And as a point of reference, Ohio is not one of the places doing Internet voting;
it's not allowed by a state law and quite frankly in a presidential election year,
would be absolutely crazy on the state of Ohio because we're going to work
with the systems we have now in order to go with what's comfortable.
So I'm not here to advocate in favor or against Internet voting to be honest with you
which may be a little disappointing because it takes the fun,
but as a lawyer, I'd be glad to argue.
[Laughter] So my goal really is just to provide the perspective
of the election official; I think it's a value.
I think it's a value both from a technology standpoint and from an administration standpoint
because the realities on the ground as elections administrators are a little bit different
than sometimes...or than they used to be I would say.
So I hope to give that history and a little bit of the technology
and I promise I probably won't even take the 10 minutes.
I like the question and answer better anyway; it's more fun.
So first and foremost I think to understand the Internet voting conversation,
you need to understand the history behind election technology on election administration.
Prior to HAVA, there were some although few really paying attention
to the nitty-gritty of election administration.
It existed; there were some.
But for the most part, election officials existed in anonymity.
You know they were the office down the hall
that the county commissioners cut their budget; that's what they were.
"Oh, elections only happen once a year; we could cut that back for once every two years,"
which is of course not true, but that's kind of how it was viewed.
And election administrators for the most part were logistical managers;
they manage an enormous logistical challenge whether it was on lever machines or punch cards,
or even you know some op-scanner DREs that existed prior to 2000.
That's what it was; it was a logistical challenge.
Then of course 2000 happens and we're all familiar with incidents
and the Help America Vote Act is passed and election administration changes dramatically.
The election official is no more this you now bureaucrat, aimless bureaucrat
down the hall administering what is basically a large logistical process,
but instead the election administrator...and I just jotted
down some notes...they're now the PR person.
They're the front of the shop explaining the process;
a process that is not easy to explain to the press.
They are Human Resources directors.
They not only manage the people in their office, but they've got poll workers,
you know 400-500 poll workers that they have to train, that they have to prepare,
and these people you know only do this once, twice a year.
And so there's that challenge.
They're trainers in that regard.
They're now accountants and not just in the money sense, but in fact with auditing.
Auditing is now a reality for election officials and that is a good thing,
but that is a challenge that an election official prior to 2000
with limited exceptions, did not take on.
And so that's a new role for the election administrator.
They still have the logistical role and in fact, they are now complex IT system managers.
And when I teach our election officials in Ohio
about you know election technology and we'd go through that.
I'd love to throw up a slide of a typical elections office in the IT systems
because the amount of inputs and outputs in a typical elections office is enormous
and it's not just the votes coming in and the reports going out;
its voter registration systems, its managing poll worker lists for the purposes of jury duty,
its managing your payroll and your accounting offices
and working with the accounting IT staff.
So in that way, election officials are very much complex IT managers and with
that new reality setting in, for elections officials what's happening is they're moving
away from being this nameless bureaucrat that managed
and still a very complex logistical process, to being savvy IT managers
and that transition has been slow.
And I remember the number one phrase I heard when I got into this business was, "Oh,
I'm just an elections official; I'm not...you know I'm not a techie."
Well that's no longer ok, right?
That's no longer what an election official can explain.
There is an expectation now that an election official understand the systems they have
to manage and with that has come a savvy with an election official and it's not there yet,
but it's getting better and better as it goes.
And so with that savvy and with that conversation have come expectations,
both from election officials, from county commissioners and county boards, from states,
and from the public and I think that's where this Internet voting discussion comes in.
You know the number one question that I'm asked, the number one question that I'm asked is,
"When are we going to vote on the Internet?"
And it's not just my friends; it's when I go to events,
it's when I go talk to people, it's what I'm asked.
"Matt, when are we going to vote on the Internet?"
And frankly, I say, "I don't know; some are, some aren't already."
You know in the state of Ohio we're not, but that's what people want to know;
there is already that expectation.
Like it good, bad, indifferent; that expectation already exists out there in society.
And it makes sense I think why that expectation exists...and it's not a fair one-to-one
comparison and I feel we'll probably get into this discussion
and there's been some really good papers written about this...but
when you do everything else online and you're comfort level online is that high,
the expectation is you're going to do this online too.
whether that's right or wrong and again I'm not saying that's correct or incorrect,
but when you can adopt a child online or at least submit the paperwork
to adopt a child online, when you could file your IRS paperwork online...and I'm
intentionally staying away from the banking example
because I think it's the most common one used and it's a fair one,
but I think the discussion's been had about that.
I think there are a lot of other examples
where people are conducting what are complex transactions.
I mean people can buy houses online without ever having seen the house.
I mean that's complex and that's an intense process.
And so that's the expectations that election officials are dealing with.
On top of that, election officials are dealing with their county commissioners
and with their county government.
These are both a mixture of elected officials and you know just county workers
and the expectation from those elected officials is, "Look, I'm going to give you less
and I'm going to expect you to do more."
And the natural transition for an election official who's now becoming more savvy
in the IT world is to say, "What processes can help me to become more efficient to save
that money and meet the demands of my county commissioners?"
Online voter registration is a direct answer to that from the election official's perspective.
From the voter's perspective, there's that convince again; that expectation of convenience.
But online registration money-wise,
America of Accounting did a great study of their online registration.
They went from 32 cents a registration to 8 cents a registration; significant cost savings
when you're talking millions of voters in America in the county of Arizona.
So as that transitioned in other realms of the elections offices taking place,
the expectation begins to build, "Well, why aren't we doing this voting online?"
The other reality with that is without passage of HAVA in 2002 and the implementation
of the new technology, that technology is old now.
That technology is reaching the end of its life.
You all have dealt with it, seen it, you know played with it,
tampered with it, whatever, right?
Its old and its hardware dependent and it's just...now the joke
about election official's goals...and it's sort of tongue in cheek...is
to be hardware independent because hardware is expensive.
Hardware costs election officials money and so the Internet is a natural thing to look
at because its hardware independent from it.
They can grab COT stuff (commercial off-the-shelf products)
and begin to work with that.
And there are challenges and I understand the risk involved with that,
but that's the intuition that's going on there when you're talking
about budgetary challenges and the need to create a system.
An election system when they're not running elections just sits in storage; it just stays.
And county officials are saying, "Well what are we doing with that?
What's that warehouse that's costing me $100,000 a year
to store 35,000 voting systems just sitting there?
Why don't we just have you know iPads that then at the end of the election once you've gone
through your old process, I can use for other means at the county level."
And those are very real expectations that exist right now for election officials.
Those aren't just examples; that's the kind of questions election officials are getting asked
from their elected officials, from their administrators, from their county government,
and so that's why they're looking at it.
The other reality in this and I don't know if you mentioned Dr. Halderman about the scenario
for DC voting, but the very specific problem trying to be solved by DC
and other election officials is the challenge for military and overseas voters.
And I think it's important to keep this discussion in that realm for now
because it speaks to a very specific problem
that election officials are attempting to deal with.
I think most of us in this room are probably familiar, but military and overseas voters based
on the statistics from an election assistant's commission are unable
to cast their ballot successfully at around the 60% rate depending.
And so it's in the election official's DNA to want to find a way to help those people vote.
It's in their DNA to get them a ballot and find a way to get that ballot back.
That's what an election official wants to do and so when the rubber meets the road and you're
down to the last minute, if that means taking one back by email or developing a system
that in an emergency or not in an emergency gets it back,
that's the problem the election official's attempting to solve.
And the challenge for the election official as far as the risk is, "Look,
these people are already being disenfranchised...think of it as a denial
of service attack of sorts...they're already having the problem of not voting.
If I have to take on additional risk but it gets their ballot back to me,
that may be a risk I'm willing to take.
That may be a risk I want to go..."
So when we're talking about Internet voting, for most election officials it's very specific
to this challenge of how to serve military and overseas voters.
And that, I think, is a really important lens to view this through because
of the unique challenges of getting ballots to and back from these voters.
So I think that's just an important you know kind of caveat in that and its one
that Congress has recognized in legislation and we can talk about that.
So I appreciate it and I really look forward to the discussion.
Thank you.
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