Computer Professional for Social Responsiblity (CPSR) Announces 2006 New Board Members

Press Release

Computer Professional for Social Responsiblity (CPSR) Announces 2006 New Board Members, Officers, and A Change of Address, and Clarifies Policy on Elections

Palo Alto, CA, July 20, 2006:

CPSR announced the election of its new board of directors. The election results made public July 1, added new Board Members: Kwasi Boakye-Akyeampong, Lillie Coney, William McIver, Jr., and Fyodor Vaskovich to the roster.

At the first Board meeting, held July 10, 2006, the following members were elected CPSR's Officers for 2006-2007:

Todd Davies - President
Annalee Newitz - Vice President
Lauren Gelmen - Treasurer
Robert Guerra - Secretary

CPSR is pleased to announce the lease of a new office at 1370 Mission Street in San Francisco. It is on a floor shared with other technology- based activist organizations, and also less expensive than our former headquarters in Palo Alto. The board unanimously amended the bylaws at its recent meeting to allow this move.

All mail should still be sent to Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, P.O. Box 717, Palo Alto, California 94302 USA until the contact information is updated on our contact information page .

For the first time, the CPSR board was elected electronically. CPSR's decision to conduct one experimental election online was not an endorsement of Internet voting for governmental elections. CPSR today reiterated its longstanding opposition to the use of electronic and Internet voting systems in government elections (see below). CPSR first called for all government elections to use reliable, paper ballots in 1989.

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Policy Position
Computing Professionals for Social Responsibility Policy Statement on Internet Voting 2006

Computing Professionals for Social Responsibility has as its core mission- to engage in policy discussions on the development and use of computers within society. This mission recognizes that ultimately those decisions to adopt or reject integration of computing to provide benefits, policing functions, or services have far-reaching consequences. In CPSR's effort to develop sound public policy and good corporate practices we have challenged policy and decision makers to address the hard questions regarding the implications for privacy, civil liberty, and human rights when adopting computing technology.

In recent years, one of the most intense and conflict driven debates is over the adoption of computing technology intended for use in public elections.
Electronic voting had long been a point of concern for technologists who were practitioners in the area of electronic voting, but only recently emerged as a policy issue with the adoption of electronic voting systems for public elections.

Public elections require voter privacy and a secret ballot to ensure that coercion and fraud are discouraged to the greatest degree practicable. For this reason, CPSR recognizes that at this point in time public elections could not be assured by the adoption of paperless voting systems. Our position has and continues to be that the use of electronic voting without a paper audit trail for government elections, including municipal, state, and national elections is ill advised. Further, it is our position that Internet voting is not appropriate for public elections, or any other election where voter privacy and ballot secrecy is essential.

As a nonprofit organization, without the same constraints as public elections, such as the requirement of secret ballots and voter privacy, CPSR is free to engage in experimentation of new voting systems. One such effort occurred the summer of 2006 with the election of new board members. It was determined by the board that Internet voting would be a cost-effective way to encourage our members to participate in the elections. The participation of members in the governance of CPSR is of tremendous importance to the health of our organization. Making the voting process as accessible as possible for members of CPSR is the highest objective of the Board.

CPSR voter participation in the election was about 19 percent of the membership, which is roughly the same participation from last year's election.

Our decision to conduct one experimental election online was not an endorsement of Internet voting for government elections, nor was it an endorsement of specific software. We will continue to seek out the most appropriate means of engaging the largest number of our members in the governing decisions of the organization.
http://www.cpsr.org