About Dan Wolf

Portrait of Dan Wolf
Dan is the CEO of Democracy Counts and the Director of America Counts.

Dan got his start in election work in 1984 when the Dean of International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School asked him to go to Nicaragua on behalf of a Boston election observation commission to research its electoral system. The report he wrote became the world’s first country-specific election observers’ manual. The following January he conducted a public opinion survey that caused President Ortega, who feared his results would be used by the Reagan Administration to justify an American invasion, to order his arrest—luckily a few hours after he’d departed the country.

He went in other directions after law school: Ph.D. study at the University of California, San Diego, teaching statistics, government, and politics, then creation of the TransBorder Institute at the University of San Diego. Meanwhile he was developing a landmine clearing technology and, later, a robot to detect and disarm roadside bombs and advising a delegation going to Taiwan to observe the 2012 presidential elections.

He became intimately acquainted with the rigors of SEC-mandated audits while CEO of a public company. This was a through-the-looking-glass experience that gave rise to the thought: If the public interest in transparent finance justifies the requirement of independent audits, then the public interest in transparent elections justifies equal rigor and oversight. In 2015, while working with a blockchain company, he realized that mobile apps might provide a way to empower legitimate people-powered election audits. Weeks later he was developing the project that turned into Democracy Counts. America Counts then became its flagship initiative.

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