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Hi, everybody.

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Welcome back.

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And it looks like our next talk will be by Andrea Myershen.

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So her talk will begin just shortly.

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So this is a prerecorded video, but she will be doing a live Q&A a little bit afterwards.

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Unfortunately, due to some scheduling, it looks like her video will commence at about 12 o'clock to 1.40 PDT.

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And she will be joining us about 1.40 PDT Pacific Time to give us a live Q&A.

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For those of you who have any questions, she'll be presenting on her Vote at Home project that she's been working on.

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And yeah, I will, without further ado, I will start presenting that.

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If you all have any questions, let us know.

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With the recognition that 2020 has been an extraordinary year and the confluence of the pandemic with major...

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Welcome back to the DEF CON Ethics Village.

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I'm Andrea Myershen from Penn State, one of the co-organizers of the village.

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And this is the Vote at Home workshop.

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During this session, I'm going to introduce you briefly to a project that my lab, the Policy Innovation Lab of Tomorrow, or Pilot Lab, is working on.

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And I'm going to ask you, should you be so inclined to help us a bit by making the project even better and extending its reach through the use of your various unique skill sets.

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So at this point, I'll share my screen and tell you a bit about the project.

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The Vote at Home workshop, in this case, is, as you might expect, about expanding the ability of voters to vote at home.

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So this is the homepage, and should you wish to check it out at this juncture and kind of follow along as I'm talking about it, please feel free.

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The one warning that I will give you immediately is that for reasons that will become apparent during the talk, we haven't had time to optimize it yet for mobile.

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So if you are looking at it on a machine, it should render properly.

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If you are attempting to check it out with a mobile device, urban tragedy will ensue and everything will be unusably mangled.

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So at this juncture, please indulge us with your patience and check it out on a regular machine.

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So what this project is and how it got started was partially with the recognition that 2020 has been an extraordinary year and the confluence of the pandemic with a major election cycle, including a presidential election and elections for members of the Senate and the House,

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caused a blend of two sets of events that don't work well together, in particular because so many Americans vote in person.

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And so it's with that that the thought occurred to me, hey, why don't I just go check out and see what kind of informational sites there are currently available and to see whether there was an organization to partner with to have my lab do its part in encouraging the spread of civics education and voter education to ensure that every American has a fair shot at the information required to exercise each of our franchise rights.

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So I took a closer look and there are some wonderful resources out there, but what I realized is that all of these voting sites, or almost all of them, could in one way or another go one step further.

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So specifically, many of the sites refer voters to secretaries of state websites, which is great, but then they don't really walk through individual secretaries of state websites and some of them are not organized in a way to help people to succeed.

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Other sites are more of a black hole where you type in your information and they may send you an email later or something like that, but it didn't really give me a sense of confidence that a voter would end up, at the end of the day, understanding what was going on with her information and be sure that there was a chain of events that would lead to her having a ballot counted.

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So with those concerns layered on top of the fast pace of changing information in various states and noticing that even some highly reputable organizations had information on their websites that was already out of date and didn't reflect what I knew to be the current state of affairs The first one is,

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I was just wondering, as you were talking about the legislation and how it was based on legal wrangling and changes in law, I thought, okay, maybe there's a space here to build something that's a little different, that's focused specifically on helping voters walk through each step,

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give them the scaffolding to succeed.

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And also, importantly, to take a focus away from just casting a ballot but also on ensuring that the voter has the best shot of having her ballot be counted in the election tallies.

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So, I realized that many of these websites that are helpful and run by organizations providing a great public service, they were nevertheless a bit optimistic.

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So, they tend to assume that a Secretary of State website or a county website would be usable by an average voter and that the information was finalized in advance on those sites, which, unfortunately, wasn't always the case.

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Similarly, many of these organizations appear to presume that the websites would be arranged in usable ways and, unfortunately, that definitely wasn't the case in some Secretary of State websites or certainly not county websites.

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So, the implicit assumption is also that a voter has a lot of patience and time to scroll through and click through things to dig up the information that is required to get a handle on the process end-to-end from the point of registering to vote all the way through to casting,

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requesting an absentee or mail-in ballot, casting that ballot, and trying to give yourself the best shot of assurance that the vote was ultimately counted.

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And perhaps most troublingly to me, I realized that looking at some of the deadlines on Secretaries of State's sites, that based on the way that current post office delivery times were running, there was going to be a problem that emerged along the lines of delivery times not allowing for things like signature challenges to get corrected in a way that allows the voters' vote to still be counted.

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So, that concerned me because the confluence of the pandemic and the logistics of extra mail, etc., could result in certain voters not having a fair shot at correcting ballots with minor imperfections.

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So, those concerns that are unique to 2020 made me worried that perhaps many sites were a little too optimistic in the way that they were framing information for voter consumption.

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So, we decided to take a crack at this.

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And in this way, the Vote at Home project was born.

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It's called Project Retriever, like a dog or other animal that fetches things.

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In this case, we're helping to fetch ballots.

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And you can vote on what kind of animal should be the official retriever at the bottom of the homepage.

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So, the URL is listed here at the top of the page.

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And so, it's pilotlab.org backslash vote.

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That will take you to the homepage.

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And our goals are relatively simple.

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So, first, to make sure that voters are aware of all of their options to mitigate the risks of in-person voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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In particular, I noticed that the possibility of receiving a ballot by mail, but then returning it in person is something that most states have, but it's not necessarily well known to voters.

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And that seems like a hybrid opportunity to mitigate some risk and yet to get a greater feeling of assurance that your vote has arrived at the point of the election commission or auditor.

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The various bodies are called different things in different states, as you'll see by the site.

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So, the second framing is around helping to give voters the best shot that their votes will be counted.

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So, this isn't so much about encouraging people just to submit requests or just to submit their ballots, but to give them the information, to arm them with the information to make sure that they vote in a way that maximizes the potential for their votes arriving in the correct places at the correct times and to be counted with the greatest level of certainty.

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Third, it was important to me that the information was presented in a nonpartisan way.

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And so, all of the sources that are linked on this site are official government sources.

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They've just been arranged in a way to help the voter understand the flow of the process in the clearest possible way.

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Hopefully, you'll tell us if that's not the case.

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So, with that, the next goal is precisely that kind of user interface.

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A one-stop-shop, streamlined approach that's state-specific, that is self-contained in a single image, basically a single flowchart, ideally.

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Though, I will point out that there were a couple states that the process is unfortunately complicated enough that two connected flowcharts were required.

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So, that was an interesting observation that I ran across as I was building these flowcharts.

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So, the goal here is also to have high accuracy, trustworthy, current information.

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And so, this project will be updated on a regular basis with the assistance of a postdoc and a research assistant or two and the kind people of the internet, I hope.

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And so, ideally, we'll end up with an easy-to-follow set of explainers for voters to help them be set up for success and to give them the confidence that their process of voting had sort of maximum legitimacy and that their votes were likely counted correctly in the way that the intent of the voter would dictate.

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So, this all seemed doable and we started building.

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So, my postdoc, Michael Antonino, who is giving a talk tomorrow morning or I guess early afternoon, depending on which time zone you're in.

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Tomorrow, Sunday, in the Ethics Village, Michael Antonino will be talking about blackmail and extortion, so something completely different.

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But he's been very helpful on this project as well.

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So, Mike did an initial cut on aggregating some of the state-specific information for a set of criteria that I thought would be good to include in these flowcharts.

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And then he also started making video content because we figured helping with engagement once these 50-plus flowcharts were made that that was going to be a major challenge.

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So, I started making flowcharts and I thought this would be a relatively straightforward process, just a bit time-consuming.

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It was not a relatively straightforward process.

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So, this project has been going on for over two months and it's still not finished.

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In fact, some states haven't finalized their voting processes and we're less than 90 days to the election.

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So, it's gotten to the point where we are emailing and calling individual county offices in certain states to try to figure out what the voting process is for the citizens of their jurisdictions.

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And as I mentioned previously, it's definitely not mobile optimized yet.

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But what was somewhat startling to us is that there are counties that don't even have websites and that the Secretary of State of one state in particular has merely a direction, when we last checked, to go to the individual counties and ask them.

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So, there have been challenges getting some of this information, though allegedly that particular Secretary of State is going to have some guidance released soon.

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So, with that, here are a few observations of things that I noticed as I was making these flow charts about the way that some of these election structures have been set up.

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So, there were a few Secretary of State websites that left me with an impression that maximum voter registration was not necessarily the goal.

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I was surprised that in at least one case, when you type in the words voter registration into the search bar on the Secretary of State website, there was no usable information that came up.

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Even in the formal FAQ for voters in that particular Secretary of State website, the process of registration was dismissed.

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Now, ultimately as you'll see if you figure out which state I'm talking about here, there is a national postcard format for voter registration.

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So, that particular flow chart links to that national document that is put out by the Election Assistance Commission.

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But, the process was not transparent from the way that the website was set up.

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They didn't even really describe it.

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So, I can't say the way they described it.

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Other states have set up signature challenge processes that in my mind are signaling that they intend to use signature challenges somewhat aggressively.

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And so, the kinds of secondary issues that flow from that signature challenge posture and set of processes is that in situations where you have postal delays, as I mentioned, you may not be able to have the round trip of a voter mailing in a ballot, having a signature challenge occur,

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or sending in a request for an absentee ballot and having that request deemed to have a non-conforming signature and then get tossed out to leave the voter without necessarily enough time to try again and correct whatever imperfections existed.

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In some states in particular, they've signaled that if your signature doesn't look identical enough to the way that you signed your driver's license or the way that you signed your voter registration card, for example, if one has a middle initial and the other signature doesn't,

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or if you signed with only an initial and your last name on one but you signed with your full name on another, those kinds of minor mismatches are enough to disqualify a particular request for an application or a particular ballot if that signature on the outside of the envelope is non-conforming to the baseline of whatever the document is that they're using.

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And sometimes the baseline of which document it is and which signature it is is not always crystal clear.

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In some states, they encourage you to update your signature so that you are sure that there will be a match.

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But this is something that many voters would not necessarily anticipate to be a dynamic that would impact their voting process.

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There are some states that have relatively late ballot mailing dates in the middle of October.

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While under normal circumstances, that may not be an unduly short time frame for a round trip of requesting a ballot, getting a ballot, and sending it in even with perhaps a challenge on the back end of that.

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In a situation where we have a significantly greater number of people requesting ballots by mail and where you have postal delays, as we've already been seeing, that is adding to the stress on the system and again making it more likely that a voter may face challenges.

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The latest guidance from the U.S.

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Post Office is to plan 15 days for transit of a ballot.

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Most voters are unlikely to expect a need for a 15-day planning window , a buffer for their vote to make it back to their election officials for purposes of counting.

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And then finally, there are states that have some unique quirks.

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For example, one state requires that the voter type out the exact date of the election that the voter is seeking to participate in.

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While in most other states, there's sort of a checkbox , general election, primary, and maybe they even provide the date next to the checkbox that you might be choosing.

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But in this particular state, they are very clear that if you get the date of the election wrong at all, when you type it out or write it out by hand, your request for a ballot will be excluded.

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There are also states that require a copy of a photo ID for receiving a mail-in ballot, even if you're already registered to vote.

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Other states require notarization of your ballot request or your actual ballot.

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And some states similarly request witnesses.

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In some states, those witnesses must be voters.

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In other states, they only need to be adults over age 18.

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Some states pay postage on the return envelopes for ballots, but other states do not.

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And some of those states that don't have a disclaimer and a warning that voters need to apply enough postage, but they don't necessarily tell voters what amount is the necessary postage that should be affixed to a particular ballot.

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So the actual stamp count is not necessarily clear.

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So that's something else that voters might be unprepared for or find challenging to ascertain.

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And then in one case, there was a situation where a state had a county that was subject to the requirements under the Help America Vote Act to translate materials into Spanish because of the number of Spanish speaking residents.

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And the county had one line of Spanish on the website, which just basically referred Spanish speakers to the English version of the site.

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So we contacted them and we asked where the Spanish language materials were.

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We didn't get an explanation, but what was interesting is that poking around on the website, we were able to uncover an archived copy of an earlier set of translated documents that were no longer linked up.

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And they were from a prior year, so perhaps they were out of date.

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But nevertheless, there was sometimes the risk of a language barrier that might prevent some citizens from fully participating in the electoral process.

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So these were some of the concerns that we had in mind.

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Okay, so as of today, here's what's done.

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We have flowcharts for almost every state finished.

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The basic structure of every page is finished.

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There are non-copyright infringing photos that are different for every state.

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And I'd just like to put in a plug for any of you looking for a novel market opportunity.

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The world needs more attractive mailboxes.

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There was a shortage of attractive mailbox pictures in the public domain.

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I went through a lot of pictures of mailboxes.

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And there are a lot of really unattractive mailboxes in this world.

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So believe it or not, this actually became sort of a bit of a problem because we wanted to get a unique mailbox for each state as a sign of respect, if nothing else.

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And so it became a bit of a challenge finding those last few mailboxes.

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And you'll see on a later slide that this is one of the items that we flag as possible optimization.

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So what's not done?

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The mobile optimization, not done, but it's in progress.

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There's a learn here more button on the front of the site on the homepage.

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That's also in progress and that's just going to be a discussion about the differences of kind of the risk mitigation of different ways of voting and the options in general of the three possible methods.

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So request a ballot at home, receive it at home, request a ballot at home, drop it off in person or voting in person.

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Proofreading, not done.

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Translations, not done.

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There's a new section for each state that we're building out and so that's in progress.

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There is a very elaborate spreadsheet that's fast on its way to being updated and also that will stay current.

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Getting the word out and getting some viral spread to help people realize that there is a potentially useful resource, that is obviously not done because the site's not done yet.

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And the state of Mississippi, not yet finished partially because they're still finalizing their processes.

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So your help would be very much appreciated with proofing states.

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Some of the states even that are done, they need to do a... they need a refresher because of the slipping delays with the post office.

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So some of the earliest states on the flowcharts, they may have had buffer dates that were not a full 15 days out because at that point in time the guidance was 7 days out.

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So some of the dates may need to be refreshed.

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A bunch of them I caught, but some of them I may have missed.

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And so the translations would be something that would be a section that for those of you who are gifted in various languages help would be much appreciated.

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And in particular getting the word out about the existence of this resource to voters who might find it helpful would be very much appreciated.

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So first proofing, so if you go to pilotlab.org backslash vote on a machine again because, you know, see lack of mobile optimization supra, but that will happen I promise.

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You can start proofing by picking a state, any state, and you should see a pop-up come up.

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The pop-up will either say high volume state or high volume election depending on whether there is a likelihood that a particular state will have a potentially contentious race with an unusually high volume of ballots by mail comparatively.

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So when you see the pop-up come up, well first does the pop-up come up, check it out, see if there is a typographical error or anything looking off, and then click through it to the flowchart.

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So each state has a unique flowchart and unique photos and unique content.

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So please look for bugs, look at the flowchart, attempt to follow the steps on the flowchart.

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Are the links correct?

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Are the flowcharts intuitive?

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Is the mailbox picture acceptable or is there a mailbox picture that you take a look at and you think, wow, that's insulting.

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That's an insulting looking mailbox.

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Not our intent at all, but there were two states where I already got feedback that the particular mailbox that was selected looked a little sad.

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Understood, swapped out image.

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So hopefully those mailboxes look nicer now.

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So is there a mailbox that looks particularly ugly or weird?

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Or is the other photo, which is intended to be state specific, a good choice for highlighting the particular state?

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Each state has lovely parts to it, and so each state deserves to have its natural beauty highlighted.

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Are there other user interface issues?

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Is there something that looks a little off?

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Is there an arrow that somehow moved over somewhere where it shouldn't be?

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Are there layout problems?

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Other things?

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Make note of all of this.

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All of these kinds of comments are much appreciated.

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And at the bottom of each page, there is a as you can see from the image on the slide, there is a link that takes you to a feedback form where you can type in the state, choose from a drop down set of issues, one of which is other, and tell us what optimization or correction you would recommend.

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Also, make note if you see that there might be some process problems of the kinds that I was mentioning, where a voter might not expect to have a challenge in the way of her vote being counted.

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So, is there some kind of process vulnerability that we missed?

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Walk through the flow chart, for example.

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Here is one example in the state of Kansas.

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The timing of the mailing out of the absentee ballots does not appear to leave enough time for that round trip of the ballot in case of a signature challenge.

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So, think about the registration process, the process of requesting a ballot, the process of returning the ballot, and the possibility of a challenge post-return where the voter will be asked to demonstrate the entitlement to cast the ballot or to correct the ballot in some other way because of the way that the voter filled it out.

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Same thing, let us know.

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Use the feedback link on the bottom of each page, please.

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Second, translations.

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Perhaps you are lucky enough to speak one or more languages other than English.

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Or perhaps you have a particularly gifted multilingual friend.

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As my friends often find out, requests to help me with my projects are a regular occurrence.

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So, maybe you have a really generous friend that will also want to help us out with this project that just kept getting bigger.

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So, please help us out.

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If you click on the translate drop-down.

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So, on the home page there is a language drop-down.

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The translate is at the bottom of the various language choices.

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So, if you pick a state, you take a look at the flow chart and if you translate step-by-step the steps are actually numbered.

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And so is the form, as I will show you here.

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Go down to the translate drop-down.

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That opens an interface for translation.

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And there are numbers for steps.

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And each state then has numbered steps as well in the flow chart.

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So, for example, step 1 could correspond to step 1 there.

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All languages are welcome.

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The list of languages in the drop-down is not intended to be exclusive.

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It's purely the happenstance of the various languages that we have ready access to.

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And even so, the volunteers who speak those languages are sometimes time-limited and so they can only contribute in one state or two states.

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So, just because a language is represented does not mean that we have full coverage on it.

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So, if you happen to be fluent in that language, please go for it.

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Please take as many states as you can stomach translating and contribute your multilingual skills to this project.

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It would be much appreciated.

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And so, third and finally, the process of helping us get the word out and keeping things current and updated.

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So, the site is going to be final by August 17th.

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So, at that point, we're going to start pushing it out through various media, hoping to get it into the view of voters who might be assisted by it.

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So, if you would be kind enough to help us spread the word through your social media accounts or otherwise lists, email lists still exist.

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I'm on a lot of email lists.

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Or whatever other means that you wish.

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There is another form on the site.

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It's at pilotlab.org backslash tellme.

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And so, if you'd be kind enough to fill in some kind of desired greeting, whatever that may be.

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It doesn't have to be your name.

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We don't really need that necessarily.

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It's just a contact method.

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And this is purely for the purposes of this project to let you know that the project is finished so that you can, if you're kind enough to assist us in rolling it out.

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We will be destroying this information after this project.

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So, one shot thing.

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Pilot Lab doesn't keep lists.

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I can tell you that with certainty because I manage the social media accounts and I don't have time to keep lists.

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So, this will be a one shot deal if you're kind enough to contribute some contact information to this and help us with this rollout.

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So, on the 17th when the site is done, we'll send you a little notification that the site is done.

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Or if you would prefer to just throw it on your calendar for the 17th that would be great too.

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Right around there.

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Maybe a little bit earlier.

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I hope.

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It might be earlier.

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I'm hoping.

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So, after that once it's been sort of officially launched, there's always the challenge of ongoing currency.

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So, as I mentioned, we are monitoring news stories in every state around developments in voting at home.

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And it is nevertheless useful if you happen to run across a story that's relevant to a particular state to make sure that we've seen it.

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If it's not already listed in the news section on that site, if you'd be kind enough to tweet it at us, that would be really helpful.

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There are two Twitter accounts that Pilot Lab runs.

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One of which is linked off of the homepage at the bottom under contact.

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But also, this is a Pilot Lab project the Penn State Cows, which is an ag tech IOT rural broadband project.

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But if you like cows or sheep or goats or llamas or alpacas because they're different.

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They're completely different.

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This feed might be to your liking.

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So, the almost 900 now followers are almost entirely farmers from all over the world.

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And InfoSec Twitter has nothing on Ag Twitter.

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That is all I will say.

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I've learned a lot in the last year running this account.

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And I look forward to getting into conversations with any of you about the different methods of bathing sheep or hoof trimming, which is a theoretical matter I now know a lot about.

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Maybe someday I'll actually learn how to do that in practice.

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But I don't have those skills, but I can ask some questions about those topics now.

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Anyway, I'll stop.

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So, tweet at the Penn State Cows.

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Another great way to get our attention with news stories.

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Drop us an email to pilotlab.psu.edu or feel free to use the feedback form on the bottom of the relevant state that's the subject of the news story.

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Whatever means is convenient.

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We just appreciate your contributions because keeping this current is going to be a challenge, of course, but we will do our best.

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So, you'll be familiar with the feedback form at the bottom of these pages, I'm sure.

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And then finally, and this is my last slide, third-party attacks may have already started on various states' voting at home structures, which isn't a good sign.

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Fairfax County pushed out on Facebook a warning to its followers that some mailings have already started showing up in mailboxes of voters that create the impression that they are from Fairfax County.

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They are not actually from Fairfax County.

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Because of this warning, I realized we needed a potential scam alert page.

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When some activity that is verified and raises concern of potential voter confusion comes up, it will be added to this potential scam alert page, and as you can see on the Virginia example that's on the slide, there will be a notice advising voters to check out what's going on with the particular questionable conduct.

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So, if you run across some mailings, posts, that appear to be trying to confuse voters and are from a source that is misrepresenting itself as an official government source, for example, such as this case that Fairfax County's impression of the particular mailing at issue,

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please let us know through either the feedback form on the bottom of the page for the relevant state, or if you go to the URL that's listed here, pilotlab.org backslash votescams, you can also submit that information through another interface on that page.

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Or, feel free to tweet it at us, drop us an email, all methods are welcome and much appreciated.

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So, I will leave the slides there.

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The URL is, again, pilotlab.org backslash vote.

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I'll just put it back to the front here.

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I will be around for Q&A after this.

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If any of you have specific questions about the project or about particular states, I'd be happy to engage with you.

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Any contributions of your time that you can give in connection with this workshop would be greatly appreciated because 50 plus is a lot of states.

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We're a very large country.

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So, thank you for your attention and thank you in advance for your contributions of time to this project.

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Hi everybody.

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So, thank you again for attending that pre-recorded talk.

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So, just as a heads up, Andrea is actually in the chat right now for general text.

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She will be available and taking live questions starting at 1.40 p.m.

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Pacific time.

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So, please stay in the chat.

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I know it's 12.40 right now, so about an hour, give or take.

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She'll be around, if not now, to start fielding some questions.

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Also, as we go forward, after about, let's say, 2.10 p.m.

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PDT Pacific time, we're going to have the Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rohit Chopra follow the same format.

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He's going to have a pre-recorded talk, but we'll be taking live questions again after his pre-recorded talk.

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Following his presentation, we'll have Jessica Wilkerson of the Food and Drug Administration as well.

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She also has a pre-recorded talk, but we'll be fielding live questions after that.

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And to end the day today, also, we will have Liza Logan of Tech Congress.

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So, Liza will be fielding questions after the pre-recorded talk.

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And, yeah, stick around, I guess, for a little bit longer.

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Please talk amongst yourselves until we continue.

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And thank you again for coming to DEF CON slash Ethics Village 2020.

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If you have any questions, let us know.

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Hi, folks.

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For those of you that are in the EV Talks voice, once again, we will be having a live discussion from the last video, a pre-recorded talk by Andrea, or known as Adgracy, in the chat.

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If you missed anything, I have just pasted the YouTube link where you can watch portions or the whole video again.

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It will be starting at 1.40 p.m.

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Pacific time.

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If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to queue them up inside the chat, and she will get to them accordingly.

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So, yeah, I'll see you all soon.

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Alright, folks.

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We're about to get started here in a few.

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I think we have... Andrea, can you hear us in the chat?

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Or can you hear me?

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I can hear if you can hear me.

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Awesome, awesome.

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So, everybody, if you have any questions regarding the presentation that just occurred with the Vote at Home workshop, please post them in the chat now.

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Anything...

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folks have been slowly asking some questions, I believe.

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I saw there was some mailbox shaming discussion that amused me.

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We can talk a little bit about some of the maybe cool mailboxes you've all seen, or if it is ethical to have a crappy mailbox to annoy your housing, your HOA folks, or what have you.

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But please post your questions in the chat.

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Right now, I'm going to introduce our speakers.

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So , Andrea, how do you pronounce your last name?

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It rhymes with sedition, tuition, extradition, my kind friends say magician, rendition, you know, there's a lot.

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So, for those of you that were here yesterday, I've been butchering people's names, we have Andrea Matt-Busham, and a little bit about her.

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So, she is the Associate Dean of Innovation, Professor at Penn State Law, University Park.

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She is a Professor of Penn State Engineering, and she's also the Founding Director of the Penn State Policy Innovation Lab of Tomorrow.

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I don't know if you all heard, we're here for yesterday's talks, but there were several representatives of the pilot lab as well.

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So, without further ado, if you all want to start fielding some questions, please feel free.

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But before we begin, what is the most horrible mailbox you've seen so far, Andrea?

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The ones that my friend Miranda made me replace, because she was horrified that I would even consider leaving them up.

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There are a lot of well-loved mailboxes, like wooden ones that have been around for a long time, and...

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am I still...?

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Well-worn ones that have been weather-battered and well-loved and well-used by many series of homeowners, and so there were a few of those that were just sort of washed out, the wooden planks were washed out from the elements, or there were...