Guest Blogged by Ellen Theisen of VotersUnite.org
By Ellen Theisen on 5/16/2009, 5:10pm PT  

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Today I'd like to introduce you to the two men who leapt forward to assist me (Ellen) in continuing Daily Voting News on an interim basis while we work on getting a permanent plan in place: John Washburn and Dave Klein. Their brief bios, which they wrote, not only tell a bit about them but should also give you a sense of where some of the flavor of the DVN intros are coming from.

John Washburn has been working in the software field since 1985; as a software developer from 1985-1994 and as a software tester from 1994 to the present. He fully slipped down the rabbit hole and into the wonderland of elections and election integrity in December of 2004. At that time he was attempting to reconcile simple elections numbers (for example, number of ballots counted to number of ballots distributed to voters) for the November 2, 2004 general election. The inability to examine election records or reconcile election numbers once he had the records set him on the three paths he has walked since; open records activism, election auditing by citizens, and the testing and certification of voting machines.

Some the achievements since then have been: Washburn v, Edman, Testing guidelines for pre election testing, Testimony before the US House and EAC, Sunshine Trouble Maker of the Week for Messin’ with Texas and the Sunshine Blogger project which resulted in winning the James Madison award.

Dave Klein dreamt as a child of having some form of involvement with election administration and integrity; however, living in Ohio in 2004 undid years of therapy that had ended those nightmares. In 2006, he applied for a job offering whatever assistance he could provide to new SOS-elect, Jennifer Brunner, and to his great surprise, she accepted. From 2007-2008, he served as Elections Research & Operations Specialist at the Ohio Secretary of the State’s Office directing and leveraging expert scientific, analytic, and technical resources.

The transition to this form of public service was natural given his educational background and his prior private-sector work, which included implementing best practices/systems to support optimal customer-service at Limited Brands. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, he received a National Science Foundation Fellowship to attend graduate school at Ohio State University where he studied persuasion, emotion, statistics, psychometrics, experimental methodology, and social neuroscience.

Supporting his wife's pursuit of her dreams, in the fall of 2008 he left the big-stage election drama of Ohio and moved to Minnesota, an election Eden. Or so he thought. He now serves on Minnesota Citizens for Election Integrity Organizing Committee and on the advisory boards of NSF ACCURATE and the Ohio Center for Election Excellence.

And now onto the voting news. ...

Published by VotersUnite.Org
Ellen Theisen, Director and Managing Editor
Dave Klein, Editor
John Washburn, Editor

Daily Voting News was founded on February 6, 2004 by John Gideon (1947-2009). To assist with Daily Voting News, please send links to news articles to dvn-tips. To donate, click here

"To encourage citizen ownership of transparent, participatory democracy." The Creekside Declaration. March 22, 2008

**Articles and commentary included in "Daily Voting News" do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors of Daily Voting News, VotersUnite.Org, or BradBlog.Com. Articles are selected for inclusion to inform subscribers' ability to draw their own conclusions based on noteworthy and credible news, research, legislation, and debate bearing on the integrity of elections.**

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