Last updated on: 3/3/2009 | Author: ProCon.org

Benjamin Bederson, PhD Biography

Title:
Director of Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland
Position:
Con to the question "Do Electronic Voting Machines Improve the Voting Process?"
Reasoning:

“Many Maryland voters may have a tougher time picking a governor this November than they expect – unless election officials fine-tune the new voting machines they bought and teach nearly half the voters in the state how to use them.”

“Debugging Maryland Balloting,” Washington Post, May 12, 2002
Involvement and Affiliations:
  • Director, Computer-Human Interaction Lab, University of Maryland
  • Conducted review of voter verification technology in electronic voting systems for the Maryland State Board of Elections, 2006
  • IBM Faculty Award, 2006
  • Gave presentation about electronic voting systems and ballot design to the National Association of State Election Directors, 2005
  • First Place, Information Visualization Benchmarks Contest, 2004
  • Commissioned by the Maryland State Board of Elections to review the usability Diebold AccuVote TSx electronic voting system, 2002
  • Gave presentations about usability and electronic voting machines before the Association of Computing Machinery and the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, 2002
Education:
  • PhD, Computer Science, New York University
  • MS, Computer Science, New York University
  • BS, Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Other:
  • None found
Quoted in:
  1. Do Voters Who Use Electronic Voting Machines Find Them Easy to Use?
  2. Do Senior Citizens Feel Comfortable Using Electronic Voting Machines?
  3. Do Voters Have Confidence That Electronic Voting Machines Record Votes Accurately?