Did Jordan's general elections, called forth after parliament's dissolution a year earlier, introduce new hope for democratic reform in an increasingly autocratic kingdom?  The panel of speakers at this research seminar will address the aftermath of the parliamentary contest of November 2010, assessing broad trends in this critical state following the November elections.

Abbas Kadhim is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.  He also holds a Visiting Scholar status at Stanford University since 2005.  Between 2003 and 2005, he taught courses on Islamic theology and ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

His recent publications include: "a Case of Partial Cooperation: the 1920 Revolution and Iraqi Sectarian Identities" (forthcoming); "Forging a Third Way: Sistani's Marja‘iyya between Quietism and Wilāyat al-Faqīh, in Iraq, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, edited by Ali Paya and John Esposito, Routledge,  July  2010;  "Widows' Doomsday: Women and War in the Poetry of Hassan al-Nassar," in Women and War in Muslim Countries, ed. Faegheh Shirazi, Austin: The University of Texas Press, June 2010; "Opting for the Lesser Evil: US Foreign Policy Toward Iraq, 1958-2008," in Bob Looney (ed.) Handbook of US Middle East Relations, London: Routledge, 2009; and Shi`i Perceptions of the Iraq Study Group, Strategic Insights, vol. VI, issue 2 (March 2007).

His book translations include Shi‘a Sects: A Translation with an Introduction and Notes, London: Islamic College for Advanced Studies Press (2007); Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, by Hamid Algar (Arabic Translation), Köln, Germany: Dar al-Jamal (2006); and Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping our Lives, by Anthony Giddens (Arabic Translation), with Dr. Hassan Nadhem, Beirut: (2003).

His current projects include editing the Routledge Handbook of Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, London: Routledge (forthcoming 2011) and finishing a manuscript on The 1920 Revolution and the Making of the Modern Iraqi State (under review).

Like many states around the country, the District of Columbia Board of Elections decided to allow military and civilians living abroad to vote (i.e. return voted ballots) over the Internet this November. However, unlike other Internet voting enthusiasts, the Board planned to conduct a pilot test prior to the actual election ­ after which they intended to allow overseas voters to return their voted ballots over the Internet. The test began around the end of September; by early October we learned that a team from the Univ. of Michigan, led by Prof. Alex Halderman, had succeeded in breaking into the test system. The first sign of the break-in was the playing of the Michigan fight song, which began 15 seconds after the voter viewed the vote confirmation page. Further very serious revelations quickly followed, including that the Michigan team could rig every cast vote.

In addition to reviewing the remarkable outcome of the DC Internet pilot, we will discuss ways in which Internet voting differs from e-commerce, analyze the threats to Internet voting, review key studies and reports, describe several elections and pilots held over the Internet, and reflect on the future of Internet voting.

Barbara Simons, an expert on electronic voting, is on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She was a member of the National Workshop on Internet Voting that was convened at the request of President Clinton and produced a report on Internet Voting in 2001. She also participated on the Security Peer Review Group for the US Department of Defense's Internet voting project (SERVE) and co-authored the report that led to the cancellation of SERVE because of security concerns. Simons co-chaired the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) study of statewide databases of registered voters. She recently co-authored the League of Women Voters report on election auditing. Simons and Doug Jones are co-authoring a book on voting machines.

Simons was President of ACM, the nation's oldest and largest educational and scientific society for computing professionals.

The Republic of the Philippines began on the path to universal coverage with the passage of the National Health Insurance Act of 1995 (Republic Act 7875) which established the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) . Building on the Philippine Medicare program which began in 1971, PhilHealth has expanded coverage to more than 80% of the population with basic benefits, but accounts for only 10% of total health financing—wide population coverage with thin public benefits. An extensive system of private insurance provides additional benefits for high-income Filipino households. While the Philippines is pursuing a public insurance approach with private add-ons, Hawaii has mandated private employment-based coverage through the Pre-paid Health Care Act of 1974 and operates under a Congressionally granted ERISA exemption as well as an exemption from the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Combining the employer mandate with generous Medicaid and SCHIP programs, Hawaii has achieved a coverage rate exceeding 90% of the resident population with extensive benefit packages. The presenter will provide an overview of the two systems and present original research on the labor market effects and public insurance effects of the Hawaii system.

The explosion of mobile phones into a region that, until recently, was nearly devoid of telecommunications infrastructure provides a valuable opportunity to explore the potential effects of information and communication technology on various economic

and social outcomes. This article focuses specifically on the potential influence that mobile phones will exert on corruption in Africa. Two distinct empirical analyses test the hypothesis that mobile phones will reduce corruption in Africa, as a result of decentralizing information and communication and thereby diminishing the opportunities available to engage in corruption as well as increasing the potential of detection and punishment. The results of a fixed effects regression of panel data at the country level reveal a significant negative correlation between a country's degree of mobile phone penetration and that country's level of perceived corruption. In addition to this, a multivariate regression of survey data reveals that the degree of mobile phone signal coverage across 13 Namibian provinces is significantly associated with reduced perceptions of corruption at the individual level.

Catie Snow Bailard received her doctorate in political science from UCLA, before joining the faculty of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University in 2009. She graduated with concentrations in American Politics, Formal and Quantitative Methods, and International Relations. Throughout Catie's academic career, her research agenda has primarily focused on the intersection of telecommunications and politics. This fascination with the effect of mass media on political outcomes began in college as a major in UCLA's Communication Studies Department, a top-ranked undergraduate department. It was this experience that inspired Catie's decision to pursue a doctoral degree in political science at UCLA.  

 Studying under esteemed scholars in the field of political media studies at UCLA provided Catie with a broad substantive understanding of political communication as well as rigorous training in methodology. While the majority of early political communication research focused on television's impact on electoral outcomes in America, Catie's research agenda seeks to broaden this field.  By focusing on political outcomes beyond elections, beyond the American borders, as well as media technologies beyond television, Catie hopes to contribute to the evolution of political communication research to accommodate and effectively study the complex and rapidly-changing landscape of new media.  Catie's preferred approach to research is multi-methodological, with a particular preference for merging cutting edge quantitative analyses with randomized field experiments.

A class was given in the dSchool last spring. In this class small interdisciplinary teams focused on a term-long design project, taking advantage of the design process structures and methods that have been developed in the d.school. The course developed as a collaboration between Stanford, the University of Nairobi and Nokia Africa Research Center.  The focus area was finding ICT solutions to the healthcare needs of people living in Kibera slum outside Nairobi.

Under the guidance of Jussi Impiö at Nokia and the Computer Science faculty, 27 students from the University of Nairobi Computer Science department conducted need finding studies at a number of health-related sites, including clinics, hospitals, community health workers, community leaders, and government offices. They read background materials, made observations, and talked with a wide variety of stakeholders. Their reports became the basis of the Stanford teams' initial understanding of users and needs. Communication with the group in Nairobi was also maintained throughout the course, using a Facebook group to facilitate discussions, as well as several teleconference sessions.

Working in small teams, 20 Stanford students from a wide range of disciplines worked over 10 weeks to develop initial design concepts to respond to some of the needs that had been identified. Click on the title of each project to view their final presentations:

• mNote: an online archive for community health worker notes. This application empowers community health workers by preserving the flexibility and control they appreciate in their current paper notebooks, but adding digital knowledge management capabilities.
• M-MAJI ("mobile water"): an electronic information system that allows people to use their mobile phones to identify clean water sources in their community. The application seeks to decrease the time and money spent searching for water, improve water quality, and foster vendor accountability by providing a mechanism for user feedback.
• Babybank: a dedicated savings plan designed specifically for pregnant women in the slums of Nairobi. By leveraging a popular cell phone payment system, M-Pesa, the application aims to make savings easier, so that expecting mothers can afford the services that will keep themselves and their babies healthy.
• Mazanick: an application to provide support and advice to pregnant women via SMS, with the aim of helping motivate them to attend prenatal appointments.
• PillCheck (Kifaa cha Tenbe): a mobile application to help people in Kibera find information on the availability and pricing of malaria drugs quickly.
• PatientMap :a system to make the waiting process in clinics more transparent, and to increase patient trust in the medical system.

This summer, two follow up trips are planned, with Nairobi students due to spend several weeks at Stanford, while a number of students from the Stanford group will visit Nairobi to explore possibilities for developing their projects further. Building on the success and lessons learnt so far, the Designing Liberation Technologies course will be open to a new set of students next academic year.