Roy Saltman Obituary

Roy Gilbert Saltman, a noted elections expert whose seminal report on computerized voting anticipated the "hanging chad" controversy of the 2000 presidential election, died April 21 in Rockville, Maryland. He was 90 years old. Roy was born July 15, 1932, in New York City, to Ralph Henry Saltman, whose Jewish immigrant parents had arrived in New York from London, England, having left Imperial Russia in the 1890s, and Josephine Stern Saltman, who had been brought as infant to New York by her parents, who emigrated from Budapest, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents raised him in The Bronx, and then in Sunnyside, Queens. A 1949 graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School, Roy earned degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and the American University. As part of his M. I. T. graduate studies, he worked on the telemetry systems for the first nuclear submarine, the U. S. S. Nautilus, then being constructed at Groton, CT. After a stint in the private sector at Sperry Gyroscope Co. and at IBM, Roy joined what is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at the Department of Commerce in 1969. There, as a systems analyst, Roy worked on federal software policy, while also serving on the U. S. Board on Geographic Names. At NIST, Roy authored two notable reports on computerized voting, in 1978, and in 1988. Although both reports were initially ignored, the latter report, "Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying," recommended banning the pre-scored punch-card voting machines that caused massive controversy in the 2000 presidential election in Florida. In the wake of the election, national media outlets profiled both Saltman and his research, and he testified on the subject before the House Committee on Science in May 2001. Spurred on by the crisis, in 2006 he published the definitive text on the history of American voting technology, now cited by over a hundred other books, research papers, and graduate theses. Though he retired decades ago, Roy's work became increasingly relevant in the last years of his life. In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, his research was featured in two articles in the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. The author of both pieces, journalist Sue Halpern, noted that many of the issues Roy highlighted in relative obscurity throughout his career - a lack of vote encryption, minimal audit trails for paper ballots, and various security vulnerabilities - "continue to dog elections today. " Case in point: not a week before his death, Fox News reached a multi-million-dollar defamation settlement with a voting technology company, Dominion Voting Systems. The company cites two of Roy's reports in at least one of their voting machine patents. The Commerce Department awarded Roy its Bronze Medal, and a Science and Technology Fellowship; Mr. Saltman also received the Edward Uhler Condon Award and an Intergovernmental Affairs Fellow from NIST and the U. S. Civil Service Commission. He had served as a board member of the Jewish Social Service Agency of Greater Washington. In his retirement, he published two books: the aforementioned "History and Politics of Voting Technology," and "Sacred Humanism Without Miracles," a monograph that weaved his personal thoughts on religious belief with his confidence in sacred values in a secular age. He married Joan Ettinger Ephross in 1992; she passed away in 2008. His first marriage to Dr. Lenore (Edelman) Sack ended in divorce. He is survived by sons David, of California; Steven, of New Mexico; and a daughter, Eve (Skip), of California, as well as grandchildren, Max, Daniel, and Sydney; and step-children, David (Tami), Peter (Bonnie), and Sara, and step-grandchildren, Jacob, Samuel, Olive, Ellie, Joshua, and Hannah. In addition to his renowned scholarship and work on federal elections, Roy was an avid traveler and lifelong learner. He loved music, both playing and listening, and especially enjoyed ragtime and classical. He set a goal to spend the night in all 50 states in his lifetime and was a member of the Best for Last Club, composed entirely of people who traveled to North Dakota as their last state of 50. He visited every continent except the Poles, and also spent time learning how to speak both Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. He insisted on visiting every museum in the area on family vacations. He loved to read both nonfiction and fiction, and especially loved mysteries. John le Carre, PD James, and Agatha Christie were among his favorite mystery writers. He loved chocolate, Chinese food, and a robust slice of rye bread with butter. Roy loved his family above all and was so proud of all of his children, step-children, and especially his grandchildren and step-grandchildren. Graveside service will be held on Sunday, April 30, 2023, 12 p. m. at Columbia Memorial Park in Clarksville, MD. Donations in his memory can be made to: , , , and the .