Committee: State Voter Registration Databases

Committee Membership Information


Project Title:	State Voter Registration Databases
PIN:	CSTB-L-05-07-A
Major Unit:	Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences
Sub Unit:	Computer Science & Telecommuncations Board
RSO:	Lin, Herb
Subject/Focus Area:

Committee Membership

Date Posted: 11/16/2008

Ms. Frances Ulmer - (Co-Chair)
University of Alaska, Anchorage

Fran Ulmer is the interim chancellor of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, bringing to this position 30 years of experience of public policy in Alaska. Previously, she was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Institute of Social and Economic Research. In the early 1980s, she was the Mayor of Juneau, then a member of the Alaska House of Representatives (1986-1994) and in 1994 she became the first female Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. In that year, she was appointed to the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission by President Bill Clinton and served on this international board for 11 years. She has participated in numerous panels, task forces, commissions and forums as a speaker, moderator and panelist to address the intersection of science, economics, politics and policy. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Parks Conservation Association, the Advisory Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Alaska Nature Conservancy Board. At the national level, Ms. Ulmer has served as a member of the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, the Federal Communications Commission’s State and Local Advisory Committee, and the Federal Elections Commissions Committee. She has a B.A. in political science and economics and a Law Degree from the University of Wisconsin.

The Honorable Olene Walker - (Co-Chair)
State of Utah

Olene Walker, co-chair, was the first woman Governor of the State of Utah. Before being appointed as governor, she served as the first woman Lieutenant Governor of Utah. During her time in office, Dr. Walker spearheaded many important initiatives including education programs, budget security measures, healthcare reform, and workforce development. She also worked to implement the federal "Motor Voter" legislation in Utah and oversaw the plan to bring Utah into compliance with the "Help American Vote Act" (HAVA). She has chaired the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors and is a past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. She was the first Lieutenant Governor ever to serve as the president of that organization. Dr. Walker received her Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate degrees from Brigham Young University, Stanford University and the University of Utah, respectively.

Dr. Rakesh Agrawal
Microsoft Search Labs

Rakesh Agrawal, NAE, is a Microsoft Technical Fellow at the newly founded Search Labs. His areas of expertise are in developing fundamental data mining concepts and technologies and pioneering key concepts in data privacy, including Hippocratic Database, Sovereign Information Sharing, and Privacy-Preserving Data Mining. He is the recipient of the ACM-SIGKDD First Innovation Award, ACM-SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award, ACM-SIGMOD Test of Time Award, VLDB 10-Yr. Most Influential Paper Award, and the Computerworld First Horizon Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of ACM, and a fellow of IEEE. Scientific American named him to the list of 50 top scientists and technologists in 2003. Prior to joining Microsoft in March 2006, Dr. Agrawal was an IBM Fellow and led the Quest group at the IBM Almaden Research Center. Earlier, he was with the Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill from 1983 to 1989. He also worked for 3 years at India's premier company, the Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. He also holds a B.E. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIT-Roorkee, and a two-year Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering from the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Bombay.

Dr. R. Michael Alvarez
California Institute of Technology

R. Michael Alvarez is a professor of political science at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). His research interests have been in the areas of elections and electoral behavior, survey methodology, statistics and political methodology, and more recently, election administration. Professor Alvarez is currently the co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project and recently co-authored a book from Brookings Institution Press, Point, Click and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting. Professor Alvarez received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in political science from Duke University and his B.A., magna cum laude, in political science from Carleton College.

Dr. Gary Cox
University of California, San Diego

Gary W. Cox, NAS, is a professor of political science at University of California, San Diego. In addition to numerous articles in the areas of legislative and electoral politics, Professor. Cox is author of The Efficient Secret (winner of the Samuel H. Beer dissertation prize in 1983 and of the 2003 George H. Hallett Award), coauthor of Legislative Leviathan (winner of the Richard F. Fenno Prize in 1993), author of Making Votes Count (winner of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, the Luebbert Prize and the Best Book in Political Economy Award in 1998); and coauthor of Elbridge Gerry’s Salamander: The Electoral Consequences of the Reapportionment Revolution. His latest book, Setting the Agenda, was published in 2005. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Professor Cox was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. He received a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1983.

Dr. Paula Hawthorn
Independent Consultant

Paula Hawthorn, retired, serves as a consultant and continues her involvement with U.C. Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California in 1979. Her thesis topic was on the performance of database systems. She has spent much of her career as a manager of database development, including Vice-President of Software Development for start-ups such as Britton Lee and Illustra, and both management and individual contributor positions at Hewlett-Packard (working on database performance issues) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Ms. Sarah Ball Johnson
Kentucky Board of Elections

Sarah Ball Johnson currently serves as the executive director of the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s State Board of Elections. She has twelve years of experience in election administration on the state level. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration from Transylvania University and a Master of Public Administration degree, specializing in state and local government, from the University of Kentucky. She participated in four international election observation trips to Slovakia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Nigeria. She is a member of the National Association of State Election Directors and serves as the Southern Region Representative on the Board of the association. She serves on the Election Assistance Commission Standards Board. She was elected by his peers to the Executive Committee of the Standards Board and serves as Chair of the Executive Committee. She is a member of the Election Center.

Mr. Jeff Jonas
IBM Software Group

Jeff Jonas is a distinguished engineer and chief scientist of Entity Analytic Solutions at IBM. He is responsible for shaping the overall technical strategy of next generation identity analytics and the use of this new capability in the overall IBM technology strategy. The IBM Entity Analytic Solutions group was formed based on technologies he developed as the founder and chief scientist of Systems Research & Development (SRD). SRD was acquired by IBM in January 2005. He applies his real world experience in software design and development to drive technology innovations while delivering higher levels of privacy and civil liberties protections. He is a member of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age and actively contributes on issues of privacy, technology, and homeland security to leading national think tanks, privacy advocacy groups, and policy research organizations, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Highlands Forum.

Ms. Denise Lamb
Santa Fe County, New Mexico

Denise Lamb is currently the Chief Deputy Clerk for Elections in Santa Fe County, New Mexico and has held that position for four years. She began her work in election administration in 1991 as a legislative analyst for the New Mexico Secretary of State and in 1993 was responsible for the implementation of the National Voter Registration Act in the state. Ms. Lamb was named as State Election Director in 1994 and held that position until 1997, returning in 1999-2004. Denise Lamb is a past-president of the National Association of State Election Directors and was co-chair of that group’s Voting Systems/Independent Test Authority Accreditation Board. Ms. Lamb was New Mexico’s Election Director during the state’s project to transition to a statewide voter file, which began in 1999 and was completed after the passage of the Help America Vote Act. Ms. Lamb’s responsibilities in Santa Fe County include supervision of all local, state and federal elections held within the jurisdiction which has 97,000 registered voters. She also works on Native American voting rights issues, poll worker training, and with the legislature and county clerks on election legislation. Ms. Lamb earned an A.A. in southwest studies from the Northern New Mexico College.

Mr. John W. Lindback
State of Oregon

John Lindback is director of elections for the State of Oregon, a position he has held since March 2001. His duties include enforcing laws governing the conduct of elections in Oregon, enforcing Oregon’s campaign finance laws, administering the state’s initiative and referendum process and publishing state voters’ pamphlets. Previously, he worked for six years as chief of staff for the Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, a job that included administrative oversight of Alaska’s statewide election system. After earning a journalism degree from the University of Arizona in 1976, Mr. Lindback reported on government for newspapers for 12 years. He has worked in the public sector since 1988 as a budget analyst, legislative finance aide, public information officer, chief of staff to a lieutenant governor and now state elections director. He is secretary of the National Association of State Elections Directors. He was also elected to the Executive Board of the Elections Assistance Commission’s national Standards Advisory Board; a group composed of 110 elections officials from across the nation.

Mr. Bruce A. McPherson
State of California [Retired]

Bruce McPherson was the 30th California Secretary of State. The first 26 years of his career he worked in the newsroom of the family-owned Santa Cruz Sentinel, serving as sports editor, news reporter, city editor, and editor. During this time he served on, and was president of, numerous community organizations. In his 11 years in the California Legislature, he focused his attention on education, environmental protection, and public safety. In the aftermath of the resignation of the California’s Secretary of State in early 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated him to be Secretary of State. Mr. McPherson was confirmed unanimously in both the Senate and the Assembly. While in office, he updated the information technology required to meet election laws, and oversaw three statewide elections and two special elections. Mr. McPherson graduated from Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo with a B.S. degree in Journalism in 1965. He subsequently was given an honorary degree in Humane Letters from Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo in 2005.

Ms. Wendy Noren
Boone County, Missouri

Wendy Noren is county clerk of Boone County, Missouri, a position she has held since 1982, and she managed the election division of the office for 4 years prior to that. Ms. Noren is responsible for keeping records of the orders, rules, and proceedings of the County Commission. In addition, she is responsible for inspecting and reviewing all voter precinct boundaries within the County and conducting elections. Throughout this period, she has served as a programmer for all of the voter registration functions. Over the past 25 years, she has been one of the first to implement emerging technology for the county’s voter registration system--often years before most jurisdictions. As both the programmer and user, she has a unique perspective on the critical components of a voter registration system. Other administrative responsibilities of the Clerk include maintaining payroll files, administering employee benefits, administering the Records Management budget, and procuring adequate insurance and bonding for the County’s assets and elected officials.

Dr. William E. Winkler
Bureau of the Census

William Winkler is a principal researcher with the U.S. Census Bureau. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has published over 130 papers and has developed eight (and counting) generalized computer systems for record linkage, edit/imputation, multipurpose and multiway sampling, text classification, and masking for public-use microdata. Dr. Winkler holds a Ph.D. in probability theory from Ohio State University.

Dr. Rebecca N. Wright
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick

Rebecca N. Wright is an associate professor of computer science at Rutgers University. She is also Deputy Director of the DIMACS Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science. Prior to that, she was a professor of computer science at Stevens Institute of Technology and a researcher in the Secure Systems Research Department at AT&T Labs and AT&T Bell Labs. Her research spans the area of information security, including cryptography, privacy, foundations of computer security, and fault-tolerant distributed computing. Professor Wright serves as an editor of the Journal of Computer Security and the International Journal of Information and Computer Security, and was a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Cryptologic Research from 2001 to 2005. She was a co-author on a study, "Statewide Databases of Registered Voters: Study of Accuracy, Privacy, Usability, Security, and Reliability Issues," commissioned by USACM. She was an invited speaker in the National Academy of Engineering's 2007 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University in 1994 and a B.A. from Columbia University in 1988.

Committee Membership Roster Comments

Effective January 2008, the committee membership changed with the resignation of Ms. Sharon Priest.

Effective January 2008, the committee membership changed with the appointment of existing committee member, Ms. Frances Ulmer, as co-chair.

Effective November 2008, the committee membership changed with the resignation of Ms. Charlotte Cleary.

Effective November 2008, the committee membership changed with the appointment of Ms.Denise Lamb.