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Our Mission

The OSDV addresses a serious problem in voting technology: the lack of technical guidelines and specifications for determining truly high assurance, high veracity voting devices.

We're a nonprofit organization. Everything we do, including any software or hardware we create, is free. In the future, OSDV may offer some public services that leverage reference technology we develop, but the work product of OSDV will remain free.

Importantly, a hallmark distinction between the OSDV and other similar efforts is what the OSDV does not do: the OSDV has no interest whatsoever in lobbying, political advocacy, or being a change force in election reform. (Read more in the FAQ.)

Rather, the OSDV is a results-oriented, performance-based organization built on the volunteer resources of all who are interested in:

1. Resolving the root causes for the problems that exist in voting technology today.
2. Developing guidelines for assessing, testing, and verifying whether an existing or new digital voting device, system, or service is truly high assurance and high veracity, and
3. Defining, designing, and building a reference implementation of an open source high assurance digital voting system and service.

The results of the OSDV work are (first) tools to assist voting precinct and polling station personnel in assessing their systems and services. The OSDV will seek U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) certification of these tools. Second, leveraging the guideline work, the OSDV is focusing on design and development of a demonstration digital voting service that meets or exceeds the guidelines, specifications, and potential standards for high assurance voting systems. A key part of this work is applying high assurance principles to open-source development, or "T-Spec" as we refer to this unique combination approach.

The OSDV operates under an open source mandate, meaning all work is done through a collaborative, open volunteer community to ensure complete transparency, public review, comment and participation, producing royalty-free publicly available results.

We believe the OSDV is a breakthrough organization bringing together the best and brightest in technology and policy into a synergistic, meritocratic community focused on designing and developing guidelines and specifications for high assurance digital voting services.

The resulting guidelines and a fully functional demonstration high assurance digital voting service will be freely adoptable as an educational tool, test-bed, and even a production ready service for organizations wishing to utilize the capabilities for polling or elections.