About Open Source Elections Technology

Has a nice sound, doesn’t it?  But it’s more than just a sound bite.  Its real stuff people can see, touch, and try.  And here is why.

The OSET Foundation is all about making elections and voting systems open source in order to increase accuracy, transparency, verification, security, and ensure ballots are counted as cast.

The OSET Foundation was established in November 2006 by a group of concerned technologists in the Silicon Valley as a California non-profit corporation dedicated to the public benefit.  Originally, and until 2013 the organization was known legally as the Open Source Digital Voting (“OSDV”) Foundation and its name began to evolve in October 2013 following the IRS final determination of our tax-exempt status after a record-breaking six (6) year prosecution of our status application.  You can learn some more about our history here.

About Our Mission

The mission of the OSET Foundation is research and education in the design, development, and fostering of standards for accurate, transparent, verifiable and more secure elections technology.  

The result is emerging as a framework of open source elections technology freely available for any jurisdiction to adopt, adapt, and deploy for public elections.  

We use the principles of open source development and high assurance systems in a meritocratic environment at the TrustTheVote Project.  

This is an imperative project to ensure integrity and restore trust in our public elections, and reduce if not eliminate the troubles with voting machinery.  

Here’s the thing: The means by which we cast and count our ballots is tantamount to "critical democracy infrastructure" and as such cannot be a black box.  And success of this project can restore trust in how America votes.

About Our Organization

The OSET Foundation is a California non-profit corporation exempt from Federal income taxation under IRC Section 501(c)(3).  A Board of Directors governs the Foundation.

Board of Directors

• Gregory Miller, Chair
• E. John Sebes
• Chris Kelly
• Peter F. Harter
• Gunnar Hellekson
• Fran Maier
• Michael Henry
• Edgard Quiroz
• Stacey Paynter

Advisers

• Aneesh Chopra
• Deborah Bryant
• Dr. Taher Elgamal
• Joseph Hall
• Doug Maughan
• Bryan Sivak

A Stakeholder community comprised of a number of different constituent categories guides our work.  The majority of stakeholders are state and local elections officials—those who stand to directly benefit from the results of our work.  

We utilize a process equivalent to that of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) called “Request for Comments” (or “RFC”).  We maintain an RFC Library online and this serves as our primary communications means with our stakeholders. Here is an example RFC.  Stakeholders (or anyone) can read, review, and comment on our design work and help us refine and tune it to their exacting specifications.

More information can be found in our Public Documents section of this site.  And more information is available on our Brief History section and in our Public Relations section.