(BBV) New York Times Magazine: A *Really* Open Election

[Syrinx]

This fall, as many as 20 percent of American voters will be able to cast their ballots on A.T.M.-style electronic voting machines. But to put it mildly, these machines -- where you simply touch a screen and a computer registers your vote -- have not inspired much confidence lately. North Carolina officials recently learned that a software glitch destroyed 436 e-ballots in early voting for the 2002 general election. In a Florida state election this past January, 134 votes apparently weren't recorded -- and this was in a race decided by a margin of only 12 votes. Since most of the machines don't leave any paper trail, there's no way to determine what actually happened. Most alarmingly, perhaps, California's secretary of state recently charged that Diebold -- the industry leader -- had installed uncertified voting machines and then misled state officials about it.

Electronic voting has much to offer, but will we ever be able to trust these buggy machines? Yes, we will -- but only if we adopt the techniques of the ''open source'' geeks.

*snip*

First off, the government should ditch the private-sector software makers. Then it should hire a crack team of programmers to write new code. Then -- and this is the crucial part -- it should put the source code online publicly, where anyone can critique or debug it. This honors the genius of the open-source movement. If you show something to a large enough group of critics, they'll notice (and find a way to remove) almost any possible flaw. If tens of thousands of programmers are scrutinizing the country's voting software, it's highly unlikely a serious bug will go uncaught. The government's programming team would then take the recommendations, incorporate them into an improved code and put that online, too. This is how the famous programmer Linus Torvalds developed his Linux operating system, and that's precisely why it's so rock solid -- while Microsoft's secretly developed operating systems, Linux proponents say, crash far more often and are easier to hack. Already, Australians have used the open-source strategy to build voting software for a state election, and it ran like a well-oiled Chevy. A group of civic-minded programmers known as the Open Voting Consortium has written its own open-source code.

*snip*

Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/magazine/30IDEA.html?pagewanted=print&position=

[GoBlue]

1. "...and it ran like a well-oiled Chevy".

Having owned a Chevy that doesn't inspire confidence in me.

[Syrinx]

2. While I feel positively regarding this opinion piece...

I say what's so bad about paper, pen and lockbox. :shrug:

[AndyTiedye]

3. Have it Both Ways

Open Source Software on electronic voting machines that produce paper ballots.
We can still get an immediate result with a pretty high degree of confidence, but we can also do a recount if one of the candidates
wants one. Perhaps we should recount everything by had for a while,
since any new system has bugs in it.
Put the entire count and recount process on video on the internet and cable TV, for all to see.

We need absolute transparency in the vote-counting process.

[dusty64]

4. SO many questions

and evidence against the electronic "voting" method and the companies and officials pushing them and SO little questions from our corporate media.

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. So many electoral issues to fix in this country!

[RedEagle]

6. It's supposed to be a check and balance system

Just like the federal government (ahem) is supposed to be.

Voter verified paper ballots, open source code, and lots of random auditing.

It's going to require ALL THREE.

You might get by without open source code, but I want to see that happen too, as another factor that helps (does not eradicate) mitigate against potential fraud.

Get the paper ballots, get the audits, and get the code out in the open.