Speaker Biographies
R. Michael Alvarez was honored in 2004 by Scientific American for his scientific and technological contributions to United States electoral systems when they named him one of the “Scientific American 50.” Since 1992, Alvarez has taught at the California Institute of Technology, where he is co-director of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project and principal investigator of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, for which he closely monitors the tide of technological reforms inspired by the Help America Vote Act. Alvarez is coauthor of Point, Click, and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting (Brookings Institution Press, 2004). He has published several articles about elections in the United States and other advanced democracies. Revered as an expert in voting systems, Alvarez has been called upon to testify before the U.S. Senate and in several recent California court cases.
Doug Chapin is director of electionline.org and has worked on both the legal and policy aspects of election issues for more than fifteen years. Chapin’s campaign experience, as well as his experience at the Federal Election Commission and Election Data Services, Inc., equipped him with a background in election issues including redistricting, election administration, the census, and campaign finance. Before becoming electionline.org’s first director, he worked at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, counseling clients on compliance with federal, state, and local laws regulating campaign finance, lobbying, gifts to public officials, and conflicts of interest. From 1997 to 2000, he served as elections counsel to the Democrats on the U.S. Senate Rules Committee, where he worked on election issues within the committee’s jurisdiction, including the disputed 1996 Senate election in Louisiana. At Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin & Oshinsky LLP, Chapin established the firm’s disclosure program under the Lobbying Disclosure Act and litigated redistricting cases in both state and federal courts.
Paul S. DeGregorio was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate on December 9, 2003, to serve on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). He was elected chairman for 2006 and has since been committed to fulfilling the EAC’s mandate. Nationally renowned in the elections field, Chairman DeGregorio’s areas of expertise include U.S. election administration, democracy building, and international elections. He was the 2004 recipient of the Freedom Award from the National Association of Secretaries of State. Chairman DeGregorio has held many positions prior to his appointment with EAC, including executive vice president and chief operating officer of the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES).
Richard Hasen is an expert in election law and campaign finance regulation who is known for his election law blog. Hasen taught at the Chicago-Kent School of Law before joining Loyola University’s faculty in 1997. Named one of California’s top-twenty lawyers under age forty by the Los Angeles Daily Journal, he has more recently concentrated his efforts tracking election reform. He co-authored Election Law: Cases and Materials and serves as co-editor of the quarterly Election Law Journal. His most recent book, The Supreme Court and Election Law: Judging Equality from Baker v. Carr to Bush v. Gore, was published by the NYU Press in 2003. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Campaign Legal Center.
Thomas Mann is one of the country's leading authorities on contemporary American politics. Dr. Mann is currently the W. Averell Harriman Senior Fellow in American Governance at the Brookings Institution. From 1987 to 1999, he served as the director of the Governmental Studies Program at Brookings. He previously served as the executive director of the American Political Science Association. A frequent lecturer both in the United States and abroad, he is currently working on projects addressing redistricting and campaign finance reform, and is co-director of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, a joint effort to improve federal election administration regarding the Help America Vote Act. His many books include The Broken Branch, co-authored with Norman J. Ornstein, which will be published in 2006 by Oxford University Press. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Deborah Markowitz was elected Vermont’s thirty-seventh secretary of state in 1998 and is currently serving her fourth term in office. Secretary Markowitz is the constitutional officer chiefly responsible for Vermont’s elections. In fulfilling this role, she has modernized the administration of Vermont’s elections, resulting in fewer problems and complaints during elections. Additionally, Ms. Markowitz has implemented an ambitious election reform agenda that includes widespread voter education and outreach programs. Her efforts have had some impressive results, including a near-record voter turnout of sixty-eight percent in the 2004 elections, with twenty percent of Vermont voters exercising their right to vote early or by mail. Ms. Markowitz also serves on the Executive Board of the National Election Standards Board and is president-elect of the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Sen. Barack Obama has dedicated his life to public service. Following his graduation from Columbia University in 1983, Obama worked for a church-based group in Chicago seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment rates. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was also the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Preceding his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama served in the Illinois state Senate for seven years and was also a private civil rights attorney. Senator Obama is focused on promoting economic growth and bringing jobs to Illinois. Obama serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee as well as the Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI. In addition to serving as an election analyst for CBS News, Ornstein writes a weekly column called “Congress Inside Out” for Roll Call newspaper. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other major publications. He appears regularly on television programs including The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose. He serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission, working to ensure that government institutions can be maintained in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington. His efforts in this area are recounted in a personal profile in the June 2003 Atlantic Monthly. Ornstein is co-director of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, a collaborative effort to improve federal election administration with regard to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). In addition to his work on election administration reform, his campaign finance working group of scholars and practitioners helped shape the major law, known as McCain/Feingold, which reformed the campaign financing system. Legal Times referred to him as “a principal drafter of the law,” and his role in its design and enactment was profiled in the February 2004 issue of Washington Lawyer. He co-directed a multiyear effort, called the Transition to Governing Project, to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign, and is currently co-directing a project on election reform. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Campaign Legal Center and of the Board of Trustees of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America, co-authored by Thomas E. Mann, which will be published in the near future by Oxford University Press.
Robert Pastor was the executive director of the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform. He concurrently serves as director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management and vice president of International Affairs at American University. Before arriving at American University, Pastor was a fellow at the Carter Center at Emory University from 1985 until 1998. While at Emory, he was the founding director of the Latin American and Caribbean Program, the Democracy Program, and the China Elections Project. He developed the technique of “election mediation” and organized the observation of more than thirty elections throughout the world. Pastor served on the Carter-Ford National Commission on Election Reform as senior representative and as former President Carter’s personal representative. He also chaired the Governing Board of Common Cause Task Force on Election Reform. He is the author or editor of sixteen books on U.S. foreign policy, democratization, and North America.
Paul Vinovich currently serves as counsel on the Committee on House Administration. He is formerly the staff director to that committee. Vinovich worked in the offices of Rep. Robert Michel (R-Ill.) and Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.). He was also clerk to Maryland Circuit Court judge Donald Johnson.
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