Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

A new proposal seeks to create a city-run transparent political TurboTax website for political donations. A new article on the website of Democracy Fund, “Guest Post: The State Open Campaign System: Technology for Cleaner, Fairer Campaigns” by John Kaehny of the Open Campaign Working Group is part of an attempt to reinvent political fundraising transparency for the modern era. The proposal seeks to create a city-run transparent online system for all NYC political donations. Take a look at this excerpt from the article:

New York has struggled to emerge from a long history of political scandals. In recent years, a number of the state’s most powerful elected officials have left office after indictments or convictions, as have numerous state legislators. The public’s unhappiness over the pervasive influence of money in state politics has led to a loud call for new legislation that would reform campaign finance and ethics laws. But the state legislature has resisted. Despite this inaction in Albany, we are optimistic that there are ways forward that do not require difficult legislation or political upheaval. For instance, New York — and other states — can use inexpensive technology to help make our campaign finance system cleaner, fairer and more transparent.

The Open Campaign Working Group had more information on its website although you will have to visit their site in order to see the full array of slideshows and pdf’s available. From the website:

The working group includes public minded New Yorkers with experience in technology, elections, and transparency. Members of the group created the State Open Campaign System (SOCS) a proposed state of the art website and database system that uses technology to transform state election campaigns, and make them cleaner, fairer and more transparent. Read the op-ed piece in the Albany Times-Union written by OCWG members Andrew Rasiej and John Kaehny.

Also see the NYC Board of Election’s NYC BOE Voting System Selection Plan Document (PDF). Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

This Evaluation Plan provides a foundation for the evaluation of the 2007 Voting System Selection and subsequent Implementation for the Board of Elections in the City of New York (BOE in NYC). It is based upon vendor product demonstrations and upon a Request for Information (RFI) sent to each vendor who had submitted an application for certification to the State Board of Elections by September 29, 2006 (the deadline).

This is a plan for the evaluation of vendor offerings for a new voting system for New York City for 2007 and beyond. The evaluation process seeks to determine the proposed voting system that best meets the requirements of the electoral process in NYC. It is not an evaluation of the best vendor per se, or the best voting system per se or an evaluation of whether Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) or Optical Scan technology is best. It is an evaluation of which proposed voting system taken together (voting system design and security features, impact on the voters and Election Day operations, training and support services provided by the vendor, impact on Board operations and administrative processes, vendor viability, and cost) is best for BOE in NYC. The Selection Plan and Evaluation Tool are subject to the Commissioners’ review and approval.