Speaker biographies
Donetta L. Davidson is currently serving a term on the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that will extend through December 2007. Formerly Colorado’s secretary of state, Ms. Davidson came to the EAC with experience in almost every area of election administration. She has served on the Federal Election Commission Advisory Panel and the board of directors of the Help America Vote Foundation. In 2005, Ms. Davidson was elected president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, and she is the former president of the National Association of State Elections Directors. Prior to her EAC appointment, Ms. Davidson served on the EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC). In 2005, Government Technology magazine named Ms. Davidson one of its “Top 25: Dreamers, Doers, and Drivers” in recognition of her innovative approach to improve government services. She was also the 1993 recipient of the Henry Toll Fellowship of Council of State Governments.
Edward B. “Ned” Foley is director of the Election Law @ Moritz analysis project and the Robert M. Duncan/Jones Day Designated Professor of Law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. In addition to supervising the content on the Election Law @ Moritz website, on which he writes the “Free & Fair” column on election law topics, he has published scholarly articles and papers on campaign finance, provisional voting, and election administration generally. He teaches both constitutional and election law. His work has appeared in such journals as the Columbia Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Stanford Journal of Law and Policy, and Constitutional Commentary.
John C. Fortier is a research fellow at AEI. He is senior counselor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission, and was previously project manager of the Transition to Governing Project. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware, Boston College, and Harvard University. He is the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles and was the editor of the third edition of After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College (AEI Press, 2004). He coauthored “Presidential Succession and Presidential Leaders” in Catholic University Law Review (Fall 2004); and “President Bush: Legislative Strategist” in The Bush Presidency (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). He is a frequent radio and television commentator on the presidency, Congress, and elections.
Steven Hertzberg is project director of the Election Science Institute (ESI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and non-advocacy organization founded to promote transparency in American elections and ensure that every vote cast is counted fairly and accurately. In August 2006, ESI completed an analysis of the May 2006 primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Although voters in this election were generally pleased with the Diebold electronic voting systems they used, an examination of the vote totals revealed several alarming discrepancies between paper and electronic totals. The report was met with considerable controversy as Diebold maintained the reliability of its voting machines. In total, Mr. Hertzberg has more than fifteen years of experience in engineering design, technical program management, and information systems development.
Congressman Rush Holt (D) represents the Twelfth District of New Jersey. A representative with an academic background, he has served as both a Congressional Science Fellow and an arms control expert at the U.S. State Department, where he monitored the nuclear programs of countries such as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union. From 1989 until he launched his 1998 congressional campaign, he was assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the largest research facility of Princeton University and the largest center for research in alternative energy in New Jersey. Rep. Holt has received numerous awards and citations for his work, including the Planned Parenthood Community Service Award, the award for Biotech Legislator of the Year, and the Science Coalition’s Champion of Science award. The magazine Scientific-American also named Holt one of fifty national “visionaries” contributing to “a brighter technological future.”
R. Doug Lewis has been the executive director of the Election Center, a national nonprofit organization serving the elections and voter-registration profession, since 1994. Mr. Lewis developed and authored the Professional Education Program for elections/registration officials, the most extensive election-official training program in the world. The program leads to the status of Certified Election/Registration Administrator, the highest professional designation. The Professional Education Program was named the best continuing education program in the nation by the National University Continuing Education Association. During the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, Mr. Lewis appeared on CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC and was a regular on C-SPAN, representing the nation’s elections administrators. He has been referred to as the voice of election administration in America.
Thomas E. Mann is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. Between 1987 and 1999, he was director of governmental studies at Brookings. Before that, Mann was executive director of the American Political Science Association. He has taught at Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the University of Virginia, and American University; conducted polls for congressional candidates; worked as a consultant to IBM and the Public Broadcasting Service; chaired the Board of Overseers of the National Election Studies; and served as an expert witness in the constitutional defense of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. He lectures frequently in the United States and abroad on American politics and public policy, and is also a regular contributor to newspapers and television and radio programs about politics and governance. Most recently, he has published, along with Norman J. Ornstein, The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Deborah Markowitz is currently serving her fourth term as the Secretary of State for Vermont, the first woman to hold the office. She is the constitutional officer chiefly responsible for Vermont’s elections. Markowitz has modernized the administration of Vermont’s elections, resulting in fewer problems and complaints. She implemented an ambitious election reform agenda that included widespread voter education and outreach programs. In the 2004 elections, Vermont had a near-record voter turnout (68%), with 20% of the voters exercising their right to vote early or by mail. Markowitz serves on the Executive Board of the National Election Standards Board and is President of the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI. In addition to serving as an election analyst for CBS News, he 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, and is co-director of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project. 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. He is a member of the boards of directors of the Public Broadcasting Service and the Campaign Legal Center, and is a member 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 most recent book is The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America (Oxford University Press, 2006), coauthored with Thomas E. Mann.
Michael I. Shamos is Distinguished Career Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and director of its eBusiness degree program. He was statutory examiner of electronic voting systems for both Pennsylvania and Texas and participated in every voting system examination held in those states from 1980–2000. In 2004, he testified on voting technology before three House subcommittees. In all, he has examined over 115 different electronic voting systems for seven states and is currently an examiner for Pennsylvania. In 2006, he taught a course at the National Institute of Standards and Technology on voting system testing.
Charles Stewart III is the head of the Department of Political Science at MIT and a member of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. Along with colleagues at MIT, he has published numerous articles reviewing the accuracy and reliability of various voting systems. His latest research on residual voting finds that paper and optically scanned ballots produce the lowest rates of uncounted votes.
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