Black Inventor Previews His Computer Voting System On Capitol Hill In Washington, D.C

Jet, July 30, 2001

Nashville accountant and inventor Athan L. Gibbs recently demonstrated his new computer voting system on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Bob Clement (D-TN) invited the entire Tennessee delegation to observe the Black man and his voting system which is pending review by the Independent Testing Authority that certifies voting equipment for 39 states.

Called Gibbs'Tru-Vote Voter Validation System, it has auditing and tracking capability and is user-friendly.

The system uses a screen where a voter has only to touch the picture of his chosen candidate to vote. The system also gives the voter a receipt to confirm his vote was counted.

An accounting graduate of Tennessee State University, Gibbs, 54, called on his 29 years of experience in accounting and auditing to create his "voting system of the future."

"As a corporate tax auditor for the Tennessee Department of Revenue, financial analyst and expert witness on utility accounting and rate making, I've developed thousands of audit programs to audit taxpayers, utilities, and government entities. So basically, this system is an auditing system," he explained.

"I looked at our current voting systems and saw there is no audit trail. The receipt is the source document and creates an audit trail. For everything you buy, you get a receipt. If you buy a suit or a pack of gum, it can be traced all the way back to the manufacturer or the original ingredients. With this system you can do that for a person's vote. I wrote an audit program which would allow every voter to verify their vote was received, recorded and counted in the exact manner that they intended," he told JET.

Dr. Robert Boram, one of the country's experts on voting software, said Gibbs' invention "should make its mark in combating the series of events which transpired in last November's Presidential election."

Already, Gibbs has made presentations of his system in many sections of the country and most recently previewed it at the NAACP convention in New Orleans.