Dana DeBeauvoir, Renowned Election and Public Administration Expert Joins OSET Institute Board of Directors

PALO ALTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#FundDemocracy–The OSET Institute today announced that Dana DeBeauvoir, a nationally recognized authority on election administration and integrity, has joined the organization’s Board of Directors. She will begin her tenure in early December.

Ms. DeBeauvoir brings unparalleled experience and expertise to the OSET Institute Board, having spent 36 years as the elected County Clerk for Travis County, Texas. There, she oversaw elections for local, state and national office for 1.3 million voters and 147 cities and towns, including Austin. In that capacity, she earned accolades from peers, the industry and opponents alike for bringing innovation to the election process and maintaining a staunch commitment to ethical elections.

Ms. DeBeauvoir won several state and national awards for her forward-thinking ideas on election administration and is recognized as a national leader in election administration and security.

“I’ve spent my entire career committed to preserving the integrity of democracy through transparent election administration at domestic and international levels,” Ms. DeBeauvoir said. “I am excited to continue this work at The OSET Institute as a board member. The time has never been more urgent to defend our democracy and bring innovation to our elections. OSET’s commitment to accessibility, transparency and integrity – and its incredible staff – will lead to new innovative public election administration technology that affords election officials solutions that are verifiable, accurate, secure, and transparent, while providing voters with an easier, more convenient, trustworthy voting experience; and that’s imperative in these tumultuous times.”

Ms. DeBeauvoir is not new to election technology innovation efforts; she started and led a group of experts in the development of STARVote, a new design for a voting system based on a paper trail, a form of a verification receipt for voters, with third party verification of election results. The STARVote design was intended to be public (open-source) technology and is very similar in design to the TrustTheVote Project‘s “ElectOS,” the marquee election initiative of the OSET Institute. Far ahead of its time, several design concepts of STARVote are now found in today’s voting system security elements.

Dana also served with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) as a consultant preparing for elections in Bangladesh, Sarajevo, Bosnia, Pristina, Kosovo and served as a United Nations Elections Observer at the 1994 election in South Africa.

In addition to her extensive elections experience, Ms. DeBeauvoir served as a Texas Representative on the federal Election Commission Assistance Standards Board and on the Board of Directors and as the Election Committee Chair for the National Association of County Recorders, Elections Officials, and Clerks. She was also named Public Official of the Year by the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks (NACRC). The National Association of Election Officials (Election Center) also awarded Dana with the Minute Man Award for developing a scalable and effective election security practice for election officials.

“We are thrilled to have Dana join the OSET Institute’s Board,” said OSET co-founder and COO, Gregory Miller. “There are few election administration officials who have as much experience as Dana. She will be a key asset not only to the OSET Board, but also to the Institute’s work in election administration processes and technology innovation and voting system integrity.”

About the OSET Institute

The OSET Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit non-partisan election technology research, development and education organization founded in late 2006, based in the Silicon Valley. A team of veteran technologists leads the Institute with extensive software, hardware and systems design experience from well-known companies including Apple, Mozilla, Netscape, and Sun Microsystems. The Institute’s mission is to increase confidence in elections and their outcomes through research, development, and advancement of publicly-available election administration technology, election cybersecurity, and related public policy in defense of democracy and as a matter of national security. The OSET Institute’s TrustTheVote® Project provides publicly-available software technology, such as the 3^rd party voter registration platform used by RockTheVote® and other GOTV operations for all parties, and provides other election administration technology to governments. Work is based on open-source principles and practices to ensure this critical government technology is an imperative public asset.

Contacts

Abigail Silverman | 978.273.3875 | asilverman@sloweymcmanus.com, pr@osetinstitute.org