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1. Name: Benjamin Bederson, Ph.D.  
2. Title: Director, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland

3. Voting Machines
Position:		 Con to the question "Do electronic voting machines improve the voting process?"
4. Reasoning:

"Many Maryland voters may have a tougher time picking a governor this November than they expect - unless election officials fine-tune the new voting machines they bought and teach nearly half the voters in the state how to use them." ("Debugging Maryland Balloting," Washington Post, May 12, 2002)

5. Credibility
Ranking:		  Experts
Election officials, people with post-graduate degrees in a computer science, J.D.s, Members of Congress, or elected officials with significant involvement in, or related to, electronic voting machine issues

6. Involvement:
  • Director, Computer-Human Interaction Lab, University of Maryland
  • 2006 - Conducted review of voter verification technology in electronic voting systems for the Maryland State Board of Elections
  • 2005 - Gave presentation about electronic voting systems and ballot design to the National Association of State Election Directors
  • 2002 - Commissioned by the Maryland State Board of Elections to review the usability Diebold AccuVote TSx electronic voting system
  • 2002 - Gave presentations about usability and electronic voting machines before the Association of Computing Machinery and the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
7. Education:
  • Ph.D., Computer Science, New York University
  • M.S., Computer Science, New York University
  • B.S., Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
8. Relevant Affiliations/Honors:
  • 2006 - IBM Faculty Award
  • 2004 - First Place, Information Visualization Benchmarks Contest
9. Contact Info:
Phone: (301) 405-2764 Fax: Not listed
E-Mail: bederson@cs.umd.edu
Web Site: www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson
10. Other: Select publications about electronic voting systems include:
  • A Study of Vote Verification Technology Conducted for the Maryland State Board of Elections, 2006
  • Usability Review of the Diebold DRE System for 4 Counties in the State of Maryland, 2002
  • "Electronic Voting System Usability Issues," CHI Letters, October 2002
  • "Debugging Maryland Balloting," Washington Post, May 2002
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