On December 14, the presidents of MIT and the California Institute of Technology announced a collaborative project to develop an easy-to-use, reliable, affordable and secure US voting machine that will prevent a recurrence of the problems that threatened the 2000 presidential election. MIT President Charles Vest (seated) discusses voting technology with Caltech President David Baltimore (on video screen) in an interactive video news conference from their campuses in Cambridge and Pasadena, CA. The inset image on the videoscreen shows Dr. Vest and other MIT participants. The announcement has evoked many comments and suggestions from the public, as well as significant attention from the news media. See the special voting technology web site for more information.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on January 10, 2001.