Fourth Online Symposium on ‘Elections in Times of Epidemic’

Zsolt Szolnoki currently serves as Secretary General for the Association of the European Election Officials on a voluntarily basis, providing leadership to the Secretariat’s work. He manages the annual conferences, supervises the projects’ preparations, the agendas for the Executive Board and the General Assembly meetings. His areas of expertise include planning for the elections, e-voting, election observations and supervisions, project management and design. He started to work for the ACEEEO in 1995, when he organized the annual conference in Siófok, Hungary. Since this year, he organized and attended all ACEEEO annual conference and Executive Board meeting. At the end of the nineties, he prepared several large observation missions to the Balkan region. In 2000, he worked for the OSCE Mission to Kosovo providing expertise for the preparatory work of the first election in Kosovo. He represented the ACEEEO as an international expert in many conferences and seminars. In his professional capacity between 1993 and 2002 he worked for the Hungarian National Election Office as the Deputy Head of the Election Department. From 2002 to 2005 he served as Head of IT department in the Ministry of Interior. From 2006 till November 2010 he worked for the European Commission as a Seconded National Expert on the area of Home Affairs.  In 2011 he was the Chairman of a working group in the Hungarian EU Presidency team. Currently he is a high counselor in the Ministry of Interior of Hungary. He holds a BA in Public Administration and completed a post graduate course in Business Management.

Ms. Laura  Matjošaitytė has Master degree in social science (Law). From 2007-2017, Ms. Laura  Matjošaitytė was a Lawyer and a few years later – Attorney. In June 2012, she was appointed as a member of the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Lithuania by the proposal of the Lithuanian Lawyers Association. In June 2016, she was elected as the Deputy – Chair of the Central Election Commission. In June 2017, Laura  Matjošaitytė was appointed as a Chairwoman of the Central Electoral Commission of Lithuania by the Speaker of the Parliament. Ms. Matjošaitytė also works as a Lecturer at Mykolas Romeris University and teaches Constitutional Law. She has observed various types of elections in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia and other countries, participated in international conferences as a participant, a moderator and a speaker. She has published articles on electoral management and election systems. She is the Executive Board Member of the Association of European Election Officials.

Richard W. Soudriette, was president of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) from 1988 to 2007 and in 2007 was named by the IFES Board as President Emeritus. In 1991, Mr. Soudriette was a founder of the Association of European Election Officials, also known as (ACEEEO) and was named by ACEEEO as an Honorary Member.

From 2013 to 2018 Mr. Soudriette, served as chairman of the SGO Smartmatic International Elections Advisory Council. He was president of the Center for Diplomacy and Democracy (CDD) in Colorado Springs from 2009 to 2015. Mr. Soudriette was a founder of the ACE Knowledge Network in 1998 and the Global Election Organization Conference (GEO) in 1999. He regularly consults on democracy, elections, voting technology and testing.

In 2005 Mr. Soudriette was honored by the University of Paris for his work in promoting democratic elections and was a recipient of the IFES Charles Manatt Democracy Award in 2007.  Mr. Soudriette is the author of many articles and publications on elections and is a frequent university lecturer on elections. He has observed elections in more than 60 countries. Mr. Soudriette and his wife reside in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Commissioner Paul DeGregorio was an inaugural member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) from 2003 to 2007, and during his tenure at the EAC served as chairman. At the EAC, Mr. DeGregorio oversaw federal election reform, such as the implementation of the Help America Vote Act and the establishment of the first federal certification of voting systems. He has over 30 years of election experience and was Director of Elections for St. Louis County, Missouri. DeGregorio is an international election expert and has worked in over 35 countries. He has held significant policy-making and top management positions in prominent institutions that have advanced the cause of democracy and elections, including his service as Executive Vice President of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and as a leader of several international election assessment missions for various institutions.  He was named a lifetime member of election official organizations iGO, ACEEEO and AEOBiH, and served as a senior advisor to the Association of World Election Bodies (AWEB). DeGregorio is frequent lecturer and has authored numerous publications on elections, including serving on the Scientific Board of the Electoral Expert Review and as a Senior Fellow with the Democracy Fund. In 2018 DeGregorio participated in the 2018 U.S. National Election Security Summit and was appointed as a director of Smartmatic USA.  A graduate of the University of Missouri with a B.A. in Political Science, Mr. DeGregorio was honored by his alma mater with the Distinguished Alumni Award.

Tammy Patrick is a senior advisor to the Elections program at the Democracy Fund Voice, a bipartisan foundation working to ensure that our political system is able to withstand new challenges. She helps lead the Democracy Fund Voice's efforts to foster a voter-centric elections system and work to provide election officials across the country with the tools and knowledge they need to best serve voters. Tammy is a particular expert on voting by mail efforts in the US and has been a liaison with the U.S. Postal Service on this issue.

In May 2013, Patrick was selected by President Obama to serve as a commissioner on the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA), which led to a position at the Bipartisan Policy Center to further the work of the PCEA. Previously, she was the federal compliance officer for the Maricopa County, Ariz., Elections Department for 11 years, tasked with serving more than 1.9 million registered voters in the greater Phoenix Valley.

Ed Goeas is President and C.E.O. of The Tarrance Group, one of the most respected and successful Republican survey research and strategy teams in American politics today, acting as pollster for 30 current Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 12 U.S. Senators, and five Governors.

Widely recognized as one of the country’s leading political strategists, Goeas is an often sought after consultant. In recognition of the number of winning campaigns conducted by The Tarrance Group, Ed Goeas, and his partners Brian Tringali, and Dave Sackett, were awarded the “2010 Republican Pollster of the Year” and “2014 Republican Pollster of the Year” by the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC).

In the 2016 election cycle, The Tarrance Group added Senator Ron Johnson (WI) to its list of U.S. Senate Clients and Goeas played a key role in the Future 45 campaign both as pollster and part of the strategy team. In 2018, Goeas added Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith to the list of Tarrance Group U.S. Senate clients in the special election to replace Senator Thad Cochran.

In addition to his campaign work, Goeas works in partnership with Democratic pollster Celinda Lake on the nationally recognized “Georgetown University Battleground Poll,” one of the country’s most respected national, political research programs.  In fact, in 2011 Lake and Goeas were awarded the “Distinguished Service to the Profession Award” for their body of work on the Battleground Poll over the last twenty years.

Ed Goeas consults on a wide range of policy concerns such as education policy, health care, immigration law, criminal justice reform, and youth voting trends to name a few.  Goeas has been widely published in professional and academic journals, including the Yale Law and Policy Review, on a variety of public policy issues based on his national research.  Additionally, in 2018 Goeas was one of five Fellows in Georgetown University’s Fall Fellowship program in the Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service focusing on “Civility in Politics.”

During the 1994 election cycle, Goeas was recognized by Democrat and Republican members of the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) as “Pollster of the Year.”  Since said recognition, he has served on the highly regarded AAPC Board of Directors, and was the longest serving member of the Board serving for twenty-five years (from 1988 until 2013).

In his more than forty years of working professionally in politics, he has served as the National Political Director of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), a field operative for the Republican National Committee, campaign manager in several campaigns, and Chief of Staff to a U.S. Congressman.  Frequently sought as a political analyst, Goeas regularly appears on national public affairs programs including: Meet the Press, This Week, Good Morning America, The Today Show, FOX News, MSNBC and CNN.

Ed Goeas is married to Lisa Goeas, who served for ten years as Vice President of Political Affairs for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), and currently serves as Chief of Staff for Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa, and is part of the Republican leadership staff in the U.S. Senate. Ed has two daughters, Jenn (36), Emma (18), two sons, Robert (14), and Bennett (9), and two grandsons, William (7) and Charlie (3).