Washington
Academe needs to create a discipline in election science to help respond to the issues raised by electronic voting machines, said Merle S. King, chairman of the department of computer science and information systems at Kennesaw State University, on Tuesday.
He made the suggestion here during the second and last day of a conference that brought together election officials and academics to discuss how to improve U.S. voting systems. The conference was sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Mr. King said elections were unlike any other event and engaged a number of disciplines, including law, technology, psychology, management, and public policy. Scholars now “only address the part of the elephant they’re falling against,” Mr. King said in an interview. Computer-security experts, for example, tend to focus on the security issues of electronic voting machines.
Mr. King is also director of the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw, which has been helping Georgia election officials and poll managers establish a uniform statewide voting system.
Mr. King said that election science could serve to train a new generation of election officials, and that the National Science Foundation might help develop a curriculum in the discipline.
He also proposed that several universities could cooperate to establish an online degree program in election science.
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