Making Voting Systems Open Source Could Forever Change Election Technology

[DivByZero]

Government Technology Article, 3/30/2010

"Concerns about accuracy and trustworthiness have dogged electronic voting systems since their inception."
<snip>
"A California-based non-profit is creating a suite of open-source election software that allows users to view and modify the underlying computer code. Proponents of the approach say exposing the code used by e-voting machines allows a worldwide community of experts to evaluate the security of the code and make beneficial modifications."

[Ozymanithrax]

1. I applaud the open source movement but this is a stupid idea...

All programs are hackable, even open source programs. I think we should go back to people marking their choices on a sheat of paper, and other people counting those sheets of paper.

[seabeckind]

2. Disagree

You protect the object code and the network, not the source code.

<on edit> Agree with the paper ballot and ALL mailin.

[Wilms]

6. Protecting the object code is the hard part. And a network? Not likely.

With open source code, we get more false assurance.

IMO:

Lever Machines, Hand Counted Paper Ballots, or Optical Scan adequately audited.

[JohnWxy]

3. very interesting. This may be the ONLY way to make electronic voting safe from 'rigging'.

recommended. bookmarked.

[gtar100]

5. Absolutely. In private hands, people protect secrets. In the open someone is bound to

call out the bugs and anything fishy. Voting is the domain of the people, it's only right that source code be in the public domain as well.

It's going to be a hard sell, though. Too many entrenched, vicious interests willing to kill for power. We must overwhelm them by sheer numbers.

[eridani]

4. ALL systems need auditing, period n/t

[eomer]

7. Transparency cannot be achieved this way.

How can citizens verify the software actually running on any given machine, what version is it, has it been compromised? The answer is that they cannot.

Any reliance on software, whether it is open source or not, is unsafe.