Linked by snydeq on Mon 27th Oct 2008 17:24 UTC
The mounting irregularities of closed-source proprietary e-voting systems clearly show the need for a new approach to securing elections in the U.S. -- one centered on the use of open source technologies, writes Paul Venezia. 'It's time for us to make good on the promise of open elections and open our e-voting systems as well,' Venezia writes, outlining the technical blueprint for a cheap, secure, open source e-voting system. The call for open voting systems has grown louder as of late, with several projects, such as Pvote and the Open Voting Consortium, demonstrating how the voting booth could benefit from open source code. Such systems are already securing elections in Australia and Brazil.
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Member since:
2005-07-07
Your "possible" improvements are unfortunately not possible at all. You'll simply never get the political will to do any of it.
On the technology, there will never be a way for anyone to look inside the machine and see what source code the running code was compiled from. I don't care if the source is opened - how do you verify that the code you downloaded last night is the code running on the voting machine today - or that some other device hasn't hijacked some function using a root-kit technique.
There are too many incentives and too many ways for people to cheat in an electronic voting system. Even worse, cheating is far more likely to occur than mistakes in every conceivable kind of voting. Given that, the only solution is to minimize cheating as best we can - even if we have to pay for that with mistakes.
The most effective way to minimize cheating is to simply use many many hands and eyes to count hand filled voting ballots. Contrast that with what it takes to steel an e-vote - just one or two individuals that program and/or setup these ridiculous machines.
Yeah, humans can make mistakes and humans can be bribed - but what a task it is to steal enough checked and balanced - hand counting humans to make a difference, vs. hiring one company/individual to make sure the computers are set up to count in your favor (this includes scan-trons).
There's a reason politicians are happy to spend many more times the amount of money for a system that is less reliable and much easier to tamper with (e-voting), rather than spending fewer dollars on simply designing easier to read paper ballots. And there's a reason obvious intimidation drops when e-voting machines are installed (that's for you NCAAP). Think about it. Why would so many incumbents support a more expensive, less reliable, easier to tamper with system. The answer is obvious.
Don't even get me started on the "legal" ways in which people are kept from voting.
http://www.stealbackyourvote.org/