WI Passes open source requirement for E-voting

[katty]

more at: http://but-what-do-i-know.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Wisconsin PASSES open source requirement for electronic voting

As background, this legislation was introduced by Democrat Mark Pocan, but the Wisconsin legislature is republican controlled. Nonetheless, the vote was 91-4 in the assembly and 29-2 in the senate. You can read the full text of the legislation here, but some important nuggets:


"If a municipality uses an electronic voting systm for voting at any election, the municpal clerk shall provide any person, upon request, at the expense of the municipality, the coding for the software that the municipality uses to operate the system and tally the votes cast."


As Milly Watt has diaried at Dailykos, Diebold is fighting similar legislation in North Carolina and we may yet face a similar attempt here in the land o' cheese.

Additionally, the previous verification requirement has been strengthened from merely providing a receipt, to requiring that an actual paper ballot to be printed:


"If the device consists of an electronic voting machine, it generates a complete paper ballot showing all votes cast by each elector that is visually verifiable by the elector before the elector leaves the machine and that enables a manual count or recount of each vote cast by the elector."

[OregonBlue]

1. Wonderful news. Diebold going down state by state!!

[FogerRox]

2. Microsoft is going to go for that