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Everyone Counts, Inc Submission to the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy Regarding Electronic Voting Lori Steele Contorer, Everyone Counts, Inc. About Everyone Counts, Inc. Everyone Counts industry-leading Software as a Service voting platform eLect has been improving voting processes for governments and member organizations throughout the world since 1997. When compared with voting by mail, eLect increases participation, while improving security, access for voters, and auditability of the voting process. About Lori Steele Contorer, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Everyone Counts, Inc. Lori Steele Contorer, founder and CEO of Everyone Counts, is the world's top expert in election modernization, pioneering the adoption of Software as a Service and bringing state-of-the-art technologies, already proven in other mission-critical industries, to make elections more accessible, affordable, transparent, and secure. The transformation has begun, and her visionary leadership in business, innovation, and elections led to Lori to being named in 2013 to Fortune magazine's 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs list, named a winner of the San Diego Business Journal 's Women Who Mean Business award, and inducted into Bowling Green State University's Entrepreneurial Hall of Fame. Since founding Everyone Counts, Lori has led successful election administration and voting projects in countries including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Australia, involving voters located in over 165 countries, as well as for the iconic Oscar and Emmy awards. Lori previously served as a technology investor as vice president at Solomon Smith Barney, specializing in emerging and state-of-the-art technologies globally. A graduate of Bowling Green State University, Lori's election modernization expertise is frequently called on by legislators from around the world and by the media, including Time , the Wall Street Journal , CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Politico, and the New York Times . The Reality of Voting and the Reality of the Internet Today The objective of the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy is to consider, report and make recommendations on how parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom can embrace the opportunities afforded by the digital world to become more effective in representing citizens, encouraging citizens to engage with democracy, facilitating dialogue amongst citizens. That is critical, given the continued decline in participation among UK citizens for elections from the general to the EU Parliamentary to local and by-elections. Methods for increasing participation to date include postal voting. The UK Electoral Commission’s study, The 2010 General Election: aspects of participation and administration showed that it is working: well over half of all postal voters (58 per cent) felt the availability of postal voting encouraged them to vote. Across the United Kingdom in that election, nearly 19% of all the votes counted were postal ballots. More, turnout among postal electors was significantly higher than that among in-person voters, which is a pattern that continues from past elections. 83.2% of those with a postal ballot returned it. By way of contrast, only just over six in 10 of those electors required to vote ‘in person’ did so. And yet, participation continues to drop in UK elections. That leads to the conclusion, that allowing electors the convenience of voting from wherever they choose, whenever they choose, increases the likelihood that they will vote. But more and more people that believe they should or must vote in person do not vote at all. Now think about how most people engage remotely in 2014. It is not by post. It is by mobile or internet. And the number of people “connected” today is the highest ever. Topline findings released on 1 October 2013 by the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, in the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS) 2013 Report: “ Cultures of the Internet: The Internet in Britain 2013 ” show that: Internet use continues to grow; with big increases in low-income households • Internet use continues to grow across all levels of income. The Internet is now used by 78% of the British population, up from 73% in 2011. • The biggest increases in Internet use are seen in low-income households (58% of households earning less than £12,000 / year use the Internet, up from 43% in 2011). People are becoming more skillful; mobile and device use is exploding • Devices. Use of Internet-enabled devices has increased sharply: 37% of households now have access to a tablet (26% in 2011). • Mobility. Accessing the Internet on the move has also increased sharply: 57% of Internet users access the Internet while on the move in 2013 (40% in 2011; 20% in 2009). • Mobiles. Mobile phones are increasingly used for a range of Internet-related activities: email (54% of mobile users in 2013), Internet browsing (52%), using social network sites (43%), playing games (43%) and listening to music (43%). • Government services. 65% of users have used online government services in 2013, up from 57% in 2011. • Skills. People’s self-reported ability continues to rise: 74% of Internet users in 2013 rate themselves as having “good or excellent” skills (up from 60% in 2003). This is dependent on lifestage; 92% of students rate themselves this way, compared with 77% of employed, and only 49% of retired people. The conclusion is obvious. Internet voting is the modern day answer to stemming the tide of decreasing voter participation – and citizen engagement in general – in the UK. The following detail of the current state of the internet and mobile revolutions, including security and accessibility, as well as success in internet and mobile usage globally, including internet voting, serves to validate this conclusion. THE SECOND INTERNET REVOLUTION : BRINGING DEMOCRACY UP TO SPEED Mobile and Messaging in Democracy Civil engagement has had a new face and a growing effectiveness in the world of the first Internet revolution - the Mobile Revolution. We all watched in awe as first there were massive protests in Iran over what was perceived to be a fraudulent election in 2009. In spite of the US government saying it would not engage, Twitter, a US company, famously elected not to take its site down for maintenance during this period so the voices of innocent Iranian citizens could be heard in real time, as their cries for justice and democracy were met with violence and death. This was followed by the Arab Spring, beginning in December 2010. Rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and civil uprisings had erupted throughout the region. The effective use of social media to organize demonstrations and rallies, and communicate in the face of state-led repression, was instrumental to these efforts. Twitter and Facebook, seemingly overnight, changed how citizens engage in some of the world's most oppressed and most dangerous "democracies." Now civic engagement startups are all the rage, many being funded with many millions of dollars by big names in Silicon Valley. Even Napster co-founder Sean Parker, with his dream team formed from companies past, has stepped up with the launch of Brigade - a company, according to Politico, "designed to combat a lack of political engagement and interest in all levels of government across America." That's exciting. Political engagement and interest in all levels of government are vital to any democracy. The Second Internet Revolution, and Real Change in Democracy The Mobile Revolution, and engagement through communication and conversation, are only first steps. Real systemic change in democratic countries can only come about through what Steve Case, technology visionary and founder of America Online, calls the "second Internet revolution." This second Internet revolution can bring the benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS) to the world's largest enterprise: government. At the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2013, Steve projected: "The next 25 years won't be focused on creating more Internet or social-media companies; it will be about using Internet and mobile technology to change education, healthcare, government, and energy." Think about that. The Internet is no longer an unknown and potentially treacherous new horizon over which only the most innovative and daring may cross. Having reached the final stages in the Diffusion of Innovations, in which even the late majority and laggards (Rogers 1962) are engaging and benefitting every day, the Internet is becoming more like a utility infrastructure which facilitates efficiencies and new processes than a playground for risk-seeking adventurers. Most everyone, every day, engages with friends, media, and work via mobile. Habits are easily learned and hard to break, and people who experience daily the pleasure and ease of state-of-the art mobile communications and administrative processes in their personal lives are then extremely frustrated when they are stuck using cumbersome and antiquated technology platforms in other dimensions of their lives. Government is ready for change. $3.9 Billion on Outdated Election Technology Before I share real-life cases of how advances in technology have made real and substantive improvements in democracy and elections - and what's next - let's remember why actual elections, not just social civic engagement, are the linchpin for making democracy work. Fourteen years ago, the world watched in disbelief when the election for the presidency of the United States of America was turned over to the US Supreme Court to decide. It became clear at that time that one of the most advanced nations in the world was using severely outdated processes and "technologies" for one of the most important business processes in the world. So Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, which provided $3.9 billion to states to invest in technology to improve elections. That was the first time in history that the federal government would fund election systems for states. In the early- to mid-2000s, innovation was everywhere! Amazon and eBay were changing the way we shop; Citibank and eTrade were transforming the way we bank and invest.
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