Dr Michael Fernandez of American Association for Advancement of Science

The American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues (EPI Center) is a new initiative designed to deliver clear, concise, and actionable scientific evidence to policymakers and other decision-makers. The EPI Center synthesizes and distills scientific evidence on key societal issues in a way that makes it clear how that evidence can inform policy-making and decisions at the local, state, and federal levels. Our first issue is voting technology and security.

In too many counties across the country, ballots are being cast on insecure electronic systems that record a voter’s selection directly to the machine’s memory and automatically tabulate votes. The scientific community has demonstrated the security vulnerabilities of these direct recording electronic systems, many of which leave no physical record of the cast vote. Many counties across the country are preparing to spend millions of dollars to replace aging voting equipment before the 2020 election while others remain unconcerned about the security of their election systems, but few are aware of the recommendations issued in 2018 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the report Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy. We have reached out to hundreds of election officials over the last few months. Messages that focus exclusively on the computer science evidence related to cybersecurity without considering the role of behavioral science evidence fail to capture the complexity of the challenges local election officials face. This initial effort from the EPI Center reflects broader challenges of how scientists can help integrate scientific evidence into public dialogue and issues.

Biography:

Dr. Michael Fernandez is the founding director of the AAAS EPI Center. His experience in science policy and public affairs includes leadership positions in private industry as well as at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Pesticides, Prevention, and Toxic Substances and at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service. He was senior director of global public policy at Mars, Incorporated, and executive director at the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. Michael was most recently a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Food Policy Institute and Sustainability Collaborative and a lecturer at the Milken Institute School of Public Health. Michael was an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry in 1991, and went on to serve on the committee’s professional staff for three years. Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Chicago.