Kim Alexander is president of the California Voter Foundation (CVF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization she re-founded in 1994 and dedicated to improving the voting process to better serve voters, online at www.calvoter.org. Major achievements include working to implement online access to California campaign finance data, prohibiting paperless electronic voting, and requiring voter-verified paper audit trails and post-election audits to give voters confidence in the accuracy of election results – all reforms that started in California and CVF also helped spread nationwide through networking, research and public relations. Under her leadership, CVF has also successfully advanced numerous improvements to California’s vote-by-mail process, helping to reduce ballot rejection. In response to growing threats and harassment of election officials, Kim and CVF are leading a nationwide, nonpartisan network of leaders across multiple sectors working to support and protect election officials and election administration. Current priorities include improving election workers’ safety and security, curtailing election mis- and disinformation and increasing funding and support for election administration. (Full staff bio and contact information)

Cathy Darling Allen served as the Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters from 2004-2024 and was elected to her fifth and final term of office in 2022. She oversaw the administration of 41 elections and counted more than 1.7 million ballots. Cathy administered elections using electronic voting and paper ballot voting systems, and steered Shasta County elections through major changes in California election law and regulation and two redistrictings. Cathy retired in May 2024 due to health concerns after defending her office and the democratic process from attacks by highly partisan and misguided election integrity advocates including some locally elected officials. She was recognized as an Unsung Hero of Democracy by the American Bar Association in August 2024 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Election Center, a national professional association, in September 2024.

During her tenure as an election official, Cathy was an active member of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials (CACEO), serving on the Elections Legislative Committee, the Board of Directors, and as President (2012-2014). She received certification from CACEO as a California Professional Election Administrator in 2005 and from the Election Center as a Certified Elections Registration Administrator (CERA) in 2016. Cathy is also an originating member and Advisory Board member of the Future of California Elections (FOCE) collaborative, a member of the Elections Verification Network (EVN) and was elected the California Voter Foundation’s Board Chair in 2019. She lives in Redding with her husband and granddaughter.

Dax Goldstein is an experienced attorney with a deep background in elections andlitigation. They have represented governmental clients in significant election mattersbefore state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, and provided legaladvice to election officials on virtually every aspect of election administration. Beforeentering public service, they clerked for Hon. Myron H. Thompson of the Middle Districtof Alabama.

Tommy Gong joined the Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder-Registrar Department as its Chief Deputy Clerk-Recorder in July 2021. As an election administrator, Tommy completed his 20th year conducting elections.  He recently completed the national Election Center’s Certified Election & Registration Administrator program and serves as an Advisory Board member for the Election Official Legal Defense Network. Tommy also led the efforts of the Coalition of Bay Area Election Officials for counties to join forces and collaborate on building public trust in elections in shared media markets.

Amongst Tommy’s hobbies is the practicing and teaching of martial arts. His book, Bruce Lee – The Evolution of a Martial Artist was the culmination of a five-year project that chronicles Lee's development in the martial arts.

Susan King Roth is Professor Emerita at Virginia Commonwealth University and served as Senior Associate Dean before retiring in 2016. Previously, at The Ohio State University, her research on the usability of voting systems, conducted in cooperation with state and county election officials, showed that voting technology and ballot design issues had the potential to disenfranchise voters and impact election results. After the 2000 presidential election, these findings were widely disseminated in the media and resulted in invitations to testify before the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, to present findings to the Election Administration Advisory Panel of the Federal Election Commission, to serve on the Advisory Board for an NSF-funded project to assess voting technology and ballot design at the Center for American Politics and Citizenship, and to provide expert testimony to the Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the Election Assistance Commission. She continues to support equal access to the voting process as a member of CVF’s Board of Directors. She is a resident of Southern California and serves as Vice-Chair of CVF's Board of Directors.

Jack Lerner finds solutions to problems at the intersection of law and technology, particularly how technology law and policy affect civil liberties and innovation.  He has written and spoken widely on copyright, privacy and other areas of technology law.  He is a Clinical Professor of Law in the University of California, Irvine School of Law and Director of its Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic, where law students counsel and represent policymakers, artists, innovators, nonprofit organizations, and others on IP and technology issues. He has long been an advocate for secure, accurate voting systems.  He co-authored the digital era’s first-ever legal guide for elections officials, “Legal Issues Facing Election Officials In An Electronic-Voting World,” with Burstein, Dang, and Hancock. He has also been Executive Editor since 2008 of the award-winning Internet Law and Practice in California. In 2016, he was named “California LawyerAttorney of the Year” for his work changing copyright law for documentary filmmakers and authors nationwide.  Jack serves as CVF's board secretary. His full biography can be found at https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/lerner/bio.html

Steve Levine’s professional experience is in risk management, fraud detection and prevention, due diligence, and physical security assessments. He is a Certified International Investigator and a Certified Fraud Examiner. He formerly worked at The Center for Investigative Reporting as a Senior Staff Reporter, has been awarded a national EMMY award, a James Madison First Amendment Award and a National Press Club Award. He is the author of Paper Trails: A Guide to Public Records in California, and a nationally recognized public records consultant.He serves as the Treasurer of the California Voter Foundation, serves on the Organization and Governance Committee of Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley, and as Treasurer of the Berkeley High PTSA. 

Ryan Macias has spent 19+ years providing subject matter expertise in election technology, security, and administration to election officials across the U.S. and election management bodies abroad. Ryan has advised 1,000s of election stakeholders on methods to build resiliency in the election infrastructure. From 2016-2019, Ryan worked for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), most recently as the Acting Director of the Voting Systems Program, where he led the development of the federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) version 2.0. He also spent more than 10 years with the California Secretary of State developing and implementing legislation, policies, and procedures on election technology and security. Ryan is a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises, the Advisory Group for the GCA Cybersecurity Toolkit for Elections, Programme Committee for E-VOTE-ID: International Conference for Electronic Voting, and Steering Committee for Center for Internet Security (CIS) Rapid Architecture-Based Election Technology Verification (RABET-V), and Board Member to California Voter Foundation (CVF). 

Mindy Romero is the Founder and Director of the California Civic Engagement Project (CCEP) at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy in Sacramento. Romero holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on political behavior and race/ethnicity, seeking to explain patterns of voting and political underrepresentation, particularly among youth and communities of color in California and the U.S.  She speaks about civic engagement and political rights in numerous venues, including the National Commission on Voting Rights and the California Legislature. Her research is cited in major news outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Politico and the Huffington Post. She is a frequent guest on NPR-affiliated radio stations in California and a regular op-ed contributor to the Sacramento Bee.  Romero works to strengthen political participation and representation. She is an adjunct fellow of the Public Policy Institute of California and President of the Board of California Common Cause. 

Pamela Smith, Senior Advisor to Verified Voting, is the former President of Verified Voting. She provides information and public testimony on Verified Voting issues at federal and state levels throughout the US, including to the US House of Representatives Committee on House Administration. She is also a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises, a diverse cross-partisan group of more than 50 experts whose mission is to prevent and mitigate a range of election crises by calling for critical preventative reforms to our election systems. Pam oversees an extensive information resource on election equipment and the regulations governing its use at the federal level and across the 50 states. She is co-editor of the Principles and Best Practices in Post Election Audits, co-author of “Counting Votes 2012: A State By State Look at Election Preparedness” and the author of an introductory chapter on audits for Confirming Elections: Creating Confidence and Integrity through Election Auditing. She has been a small business and marketing consultant and nonprofit executive for a Hispanic educational organization working on first language literacy and adult learning.

CVF Board Chairman, 1999-2019

Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis.  His involvement with CVF stems from his pioneering collaboration with Kim Alexander in the late 1990s in the use of the internet to teach California Politics and Government at UC Davis and his work mentoring legislative and executive branch interns from all ten UC campuses at the University of California Center Sacramento, of which he was a founding faculty member.  He received the Academic Senate’s Distinguished Teaching Award for his innovative work in the use of the internet for research and policy analysis.  He was educated in England and received his doctorate from the University of Washington. He has held visiting appointments at the Science Center Berlin and the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii.  He is currently Senior Editor of the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the Burgon Society, and takes regular exercise on a bike. On the web at http://gawsmith.ucdavis.edu.

CVF Board Chairman, 1997-1999

David Jefferson is a Visiting Computer Scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. From 1980 to 1994 he was a professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California and UCLA.  In 1994, at the Digital Equipment Corporation, he oversaw development of the California Election Server, the first web server anywhere to provide nonpartisan online voter information about candidates and issues. In collaboration with CVF, he created the first online campaign finance database for the 1995 San Francisco municipal elections. He is a recognized expert on and determined critic of the security of internet voting, and in 1999 wrote the first major study of the subject.  He has been a technical advisor to five California Secretaries of State. His expertise is sought by panels and task forces created to provide policy advice on voting security and voting systems technology, including NSF, the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, the Department of Defense and the Federal Election Commission. His media appearances include CBS 60 Minutes and the PBS News Hour. David served on CVF's Board of Directors from 1996-2021 and as Board Chair from 1997-1999.