Some of this text was adapted from a press release and a post from the Scantegrity blog

UMBC Professor Alan Sherman, UMBC alumnus Rick Carback (Ph.D. 2010) and many former and current UMBC students helped to develop Scantegrity, an an open source election verification technology for optical scan voting systems. In 2009, their Scantegrity II voting system was used in the election of the mayor and city council members of Takoma Park, Maryland. This was an historic first time any end-to-end voter verifiable voting system with ballot privacy has been used in a binding governmental election.

This week, absentee voters in Takoma Park, Maryland will have the option to cast their votes for mayor and city council using a new Internet voting system called Remotegrity which uses the same approach of generating privacy preserving confirmation numbers that allow each voter to verify her vote is counted and anyone to verify that all the votes were counted correctly. Dr. Carback has played a significant role in helping Takoma Park adopt and use Scantegrity and Remotegrity in the municipal elections.

Internet voting has been used to elect government officials before (for example, in Switzerland, Estonia, and Norway), but what is new here is that voters mail in paper ballots and use the Internet to independently verify that their votes have been received by the city and recorded correctly. Anyone can check online that the recorded votes were tallied correctly.

Dr. Filip Zagorski, computer scientist at The George Washington University, explains ÒThrough the hybrid use of paper ballots and Internet verification, Remotegrity combines the best of both worlds to provide a very high degree of security even against malware and insider attack.Ó Portions of the underlying research in cryptography and secure server design were supported by the National Science Foundation and the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Voters who have requested to vote by mail receive a ballot which they mark and mail in, but they can also verify their vote on-line in the Remotegrity system, without revealing how they voted. In future elections, the same online procedure may cast votes and physical mailing of paper ballots may be optional or omitted.

The city will also use the Scantegrity voting system for voters who cast their ballot in person, as it did in 2009. The integrated Scantegrity and Remotegrity systems offer full end-to-end voter-verifiability, in which voters casting ballots from home or in person can verify that their votes were correctly cast, collected, and counted.

Additionally, this year, the city will provide an audio interface for marking ballots. The interface, named Audiotegrity, developed by researchers at The George Washington University, will enable voters with difficulty marking paper ballots to mark ballots independently using an electronic interface. Mr. Noel Runyan, a usability and accessibility expert, provided pro bono design advice to the Audiotegrity team.

With a grant from the federal Election Assistance Commission, and support from the non-profit Voting Systems Institute, researchers from UMBC will survey voters and election officials as well as conduct focus groups around their experiences using these new voting systems.

For more information, see the recent paper by UMBC Ph.D. alumnus Rick Carback et al., Scantegrity II Municipal Election at Takoma Park: The First E2E Binding Governmental Election with Ballot Privacy, or contact Professor Alan Sherman.

Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale will host a special graduate student seminar on Saturday, Nov. 12 at 10:00 AM.

“Completing Your Thesis or Dissertation”

A Special Saturday Breakfast Success Seminar

WORKSHOP/TRAINING · On UMBC’s Campus : Commons 329 ·

If you are part of the UMBC community, please RSVP on MyUMBC: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/9151

If you are from a different campus, please rsvp by replying to this post on http://thedissertationhouse.com as a comment. Please post your name, department, and school.

Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale will host a special graduate student seminar on Saturday, Nov. 12 at 10:00 AM.

“Completing Your Thesis or Dissertation”

A Special Saturday Breakfast Success Seminar

WORKSHOP/TRAINING · On UMBC’s Campus : Commons 329 ·

If you are part of the UMBC community, please RSVP on MyUMBC: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/9151

If you are from a different campus, please rsvp by replying to this post on http://thedissertationhouse.com as a comment. Please post your name, department, and school.

Image from the Guardian

We’ve all heard jokes about compensating for size, but have you heard about compensating with (super) size?

A new report out by the Journal of Consumer Research has found two interesting explanations for why Americans are susceptible to super-sizing.

First, we tend to associate larger food sizes with higher social status.

Researchers asked people to judge a person’s status, based on whether he or she picked the largest coffee, smoothie, or pizza offered. The people choosing the biggest portion were judged to have the highest status.

Second, when we’re feeling powerless, we’re more likely to compensate by choosing a larger size.  On days when we’re feel better about ourselves, we size down.

What do these results say about eating habits?  Could America’s obesity problem be blamed on low-self esteem?  Will you super-size next time?

Image from Colorlines

Unity in Greece?

Here we go again: another woman claims Herman Cain sexually harassed her.

Lovable curmudgeon and iconic brow-furrower Andy Rooney dies.

Infographics!  Generations!  Elections!  Check out NPR’s coverage of generational differences in political perspectives.

Check out the Before I Die project!

This week is not very great in the world of movies. Only two wide releases are coming out, both comedies that could be busts.

So, what’s out this weekend?

Tower Heist

I think this movie looks sort of awful but it could be one of those mostly non-offensive comedies that are an okay way to waste $10 and a Friday night. It really depends on what you’re into. Ben Stiller has been hit-or-miss the past few years, but this looks more Little Fockers than Tropic Thunder. Let usknow if we are wrong!

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

I thought the original was great, the sequel was horrific, and this one doesn’t appear too promising. They seem to be going for the “3D is ridiculous so we’re exploiting it”-thing but Piranhas 3D already did that and I’m almost certain they did it way better. It’s also a bit too far from Christmas for that to be a drawing point. I do know people who caught a screener and thought it was pretty funny with some awesome claymation portions and an on-point Neil Patrick Harris. Seems to be a step up from Guantanamo Bay.

OUR RECOMMENDATION: See something at the Charles Theater this weekend. If you’ve never been, you definitely should make the roughly 20-minute trek from campus.

It’s Baltimore art-house theater but they regularly play mainstream movies as well–not to mention they have great popcorn. These are the new titles, but also showing is 50/50, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Margin Call, Take Shelter, & The Hedgehog. And to make the theater even more cool, they have a revival series with a different classic playing each week.

This weekend they’re showing The Grapes of Wrath. (Side note: stop by Sofi’s Crepes, right next to the theater, before or after for some great eats!)

Martha Marcy May Marlene

This film is described as a psychological thriller, but it’s more of a drama. Watching this film I was waiting for the more “thrilling” moments to start but it never exactly happened. However, this is not to say it isn’t good. This was an excellent film, with an amazing performance by Elizabeth Olsen (the twin’s younger sister).

Olsen’s character is recently escaped from a cult-ish commune where she has been living for two years under a Manson-esque leader (John Hawkes). The film portrays her attempt to assimilate back into normal life while having constant flashbacks to her time at the commune, all while her paranoia and fear grow. The cinematography, direction, and performances are all well-done as they tackle a subject that is hard to watch. If you are into indie dramas, definitely give it a watch.

The Skin I Live In

A artsy Spanish horror/thriller about a a surgeon (Antonia Banderas) who’s obsessed with creating more resilient skin and must test his creation on a human subject. The premise seems quite unsettling, although the trailer leaves basically everything to the imagination. The director, Pedro Almodóva is known for taking on intense stories with great results so I’d give this a shot.

Planning on seeing one of these movies this weekend? Something else? Watched anything good recently? Let us know!