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Unfortunately the "2,000 chemicals" myth is still oft-repeated in government circles without any supporting evidence.

TOXICOLOGY – ROUTES OF EXPOSURE:

One or more of the greater than 2000 chemicals in cigarette
smoke can paralyse the cilia and stop the flow of the blanket layer
of mucous. Studies have shown that one puff of cigarette smoke
can paralyse the cilia for as much as 20 to 40 minutes (Williams
and Burson, et al. 1985).

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL, 13 November 2008:

They simply cannot meet the standards that the Australian public has come to expect. I might add that as soon as those 400 individual compounds are combusted they turn into 2,000 chemicals, which contain a number of highly poisonous and highly toxic substances.

Mr. Moore in Hansard 23 Feburary 1994:

We have heard the approach taken by the Leader of the Opposition. She talked about ventilation,
using the Australian standards to get a level of ventilation and to determine whether or not people
are exposed to passive smoking. Of course, there is another approach, and that is simply to monitor
particulates to determine whether the 40 or so carcinogens or the 2,000 chemicals released through
cigarette smoking can be measured, and whether or not we can determine that an area is actually
free from smoke or that it is at an acceptable level.

In Australia a driver of ANY public transport needs to go to the local motor registry office. They have to have a police check done, they must pass medical requirements, they must also have a certain amount of driving experience (these rules differ slightly between states but are generally very similar), once you pass the basic requirements you can get your standard license upgraded to a commercial vehicle/public transport license. You also have two types of insurance. private car insurance and commercial car insurance. these are not requirements on Uber, they are requirements for driver/owner of the car. if you are operating your car in a commercial capacity then your private insurance is deemed invalid during that time as you are only covered for use as a private transport. here is the ACT commercial/hire car license application
http://www.rego.act.gov.au/__d...

I firmly believe that all electronic voting machines should have full source code released and receipts that should be printed and signed by the voter and placed in a box next to the machine in case of recounts or verification questions.

The system in the article is about counting the pieces of paper we manually write our votes on, because we use a preference voting system (instant run off), if your #1 candidate gets eliminated, your vote gets reassigned to your #2 candidate. In the Senate, there's also a seat-quota system, where preferences simultaneously flow "down" as well as "up", so it's difficult to give the quick result that everyone wants on election night.

The AEC trialled actual electronic voting in one Australian territory, ACT, because it has an even more complex preference system (Hare-Clark).

Here's the source code for the ACT machines: http://www.elections.act.gov.au/__data/assets/file/0004/8185/evacs2012.zip Linux-only.

The Australian government has had a bit of a weird relationship with open source voting software. For example, the source for the eVACS voting system is available to download. It is not, however, easily buildable - they've specifically removed all config files, design specs, and instructions on how to get it into a usable state. You can look at the source to see the maths behind the scenes, but you don't get to play with a working copy.

As an aside: The man who made the FOI is a friend of a a friend, and I was only slightly surprised to see him on the front page of slashdot. It was probably bound to happen one day.

FYI, ABS doesn't decrease stopping distance. The difference is that ABS increases your ability to steer in low traction conditions.

This comment was sponsored by many years' worth of personal experience, Road&Track, and the Infallible and Unending People's Republic of Australia.

In Canberra the bus system is linked into Transit for Google Maps

https://action.act.gov.au/googletransit/default.html

Some information about the ACT electronic voting system here: http://www.elections.act.gov.au/elections/electronicvoting.html

Material that is reviewed and "Refused Classification" (or likely to be) is absolutely NOT legally available in Australia including the ACT and NT under the various State and Territory laws (e.g Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) (Enforcement) Act 1995 Div 2.2 Sect 16 and 20). This is where child porn, bestiality, incitement to crime etc. end up. In classic double-standards, any computer game that would receive R18+ if it were a movie is refused classification.

AFAIK no state bans ownership of X18+ pornography, just the sale. The ACT legislative assembly has long taken a pragmatic view on pornography by regulating and taxing rather than trying to ban. Material classified X18+ is legally available for sale in the ACT, and trade provisions in the Constitution make it legal to take cross-border once purchased. It is of dubious legality to host material that would be classified X18+ on any server anywhere in Australia, which typically includes the covers of X18+ movies: online shops will be hosted overseas.

.. We need open source software so that the voting process is transparent. I'll stick to any location I can find that still uses paper ballots otherwise. I also seem to remember these machines being trivially easy to tinker with.

I wanted to mod you insightful but I thought it may be better to let you know that an open source voting system already exists. A security analysis (pdf warning) has been performed and the ACT Electoral Commission has full details of the the behaviour of the code you can download.

You should also check out Open Voting Consortium because we are all friends so lets help each other be free.

While we may not see open source voting machine anytime in the near future,

Already in use in at least one place.

---

Stop using tab characters in your code!

Australia has some e-voting software that is open sourced, http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html also has a link to the source code.

The Australian Capital Territory seems to be making a decent attempt. I don't know about the physical machine security, but at least everything is open source and voting machines are not hooked up to the net.

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html It's open source, it's verifiable, it's secure.

But doesn't even the most open, verified system still suffer from having the "Vote for Bob" patch installed at the last minute by an official-looking guy with glasses and a clipboard? I know, this shouldn't be allowed, but it seems to happen all the flippin' time! People just don't yet understand what's required to keep a computer secure, but it's pretty easy to understand "Don't let anyone steal or tamper with these little pieces of paper!" Security has to deal with what actually happens in the real world, not in theory, and out here in the real world, computers are a mystery to most election officials in a way that pieces of paper are not. This mysteriousness can lead to bad decisions about what kind of access is allowed.

OK, the Australian system is voter-verifiable, but if you're going to need to have all the voters bring back their receipts afterwards, why not just count the paper to begin with?

If I were an American, I'd be very frightened about voting using an electronic machine, given all the horror stories I've been reading. And as a Canadian, I'm quite happy with our paper ballot system, and I'll resist any attempt to replace it!

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html

It's open source, it's verifiable, it's secure.

The Australian Capital Territory has been using this software for their past two elections, and it's released under the GPL, and runs on Linux. I've just looked through a bit of the code, and I would like it to have documentation that describes it at a high level, and I'm sure they could make some improvements. Even so, it's still much better than (cough) other systems!
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html

We're out of superlatives, but it's even worse than that. There's already an effective, well-tested electronic voting system available. It's called EVACS and was developed in Australia in 2001. You can download the source here:
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html
Wired's story here:
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.htm l

no in Oceania we use these machines:
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/EVACS.html

oh, and here's the tarball for the SOURCE
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/evacs.tar.gz

America, please clean up your act ok? It's getting pretty bad, but I still think it's like two elections away from fascism proper....

Here's a TODO list for you if you can't figure out what to do:
* be very vocal about your constitution so there aren't any more slippages
* get involved with politics online
* if you are a republican, get your party back to it's more libertarian, isolationist and fiscally conservative roots
* if you are a democrat keep pushing with the netroots movement to kick all the spineless wankers out of the party
* if you are green/libertarian/other don't ride along with some wanker and his no-hope bid for the presidency, there is literally NO HOPE under the current system. The only hope is for ALL the third parties to come together under a blanket organisation which advocates a reform to preferential voting (aka instant run-off voting) then, after you have all the groups together you can then say that you will vote as a block for the party of the main two that will support the idea. I.e. you say to them "I have 4% of the nations votes, make this reform and I will deliver you the presidency".
* end the war on terror, I am not saying pull out of iraq or whatever, you can decide on that, but stop having an endless war on a word... a guy down at the pub told me a rumour that it's not good for civil liberties to have an endless war

no in Oceania we use these machines:
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/EVACS.html

oh, and here's the tarball for the SOURCE
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/evacs.tar.gz

America, please clean up your act ok? It's getting pretty bad, but I still think it's like two elections away from fascism proper....

Here's a TODO list for you if you can't figure out what to do:
* be very vocal about your constitution so there aren't any more slippages
* get involved with politics online
* if you are a republican, get your party back to it's more libertarian, isolationist and fiscally conservative roots
* if you are a democrat keep pushing with the netroots movement to kick all the spineless wankers out of the party
* if you are green/libertarian/other don't ride along with some wanker and his no-hope bid for the presidency, there is literally NO HOPE under the current system. The only hope is for ALL the third parties to come together under a blanket organisation which advocates a reform to preferential voting (aka instant run-off voting) then, after you have all the groups together you can then say that you will vote as a block for the party of the main two that will support the idea. I.e. you say to them "I have 4% of the nations votes, make this reform and I will deliver you the presidency".
* end the war on terror, I am not saying pull out of iraq or whatever, you can decide on that, but stop having an endless war on a word... a guy down at the pub told me a rumour that it's not good for civil liberties to have an endless war

It's interesting to note that the source code includes a patch to rectify a bug found by a local University. The Uni (ANU+NICTA) took advantage of the free nature of the code and used it as a basis for formal code verification research. Score one for Free software.

Here in Australia we have a system that works, and has been used already.

It's also worth noting that the eVACS system is free software under the GPL and you can get the source, and some more info, at the ACT Electoral Commission site.

Relevant to the article!

We've got an open source electronic voting system in the Australian Capital Territory, it's been used in two elections.

Details and code here.

EVACS started open source under the GPL - but closed the source at a later point.

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/EVACS.html

It is made in Australia, and I was of the impression has been used in elections already.

LetterRip

This open-source system was developed by a number of well known names in the open source community - including - Andrew Tridgell (Samba), Martin Pool (Apache), and Rusty Russell (ip-tables / netfilter).

All elections for the ACT government in Australia are now run using this system. Votes are lodged either at an eVACS terminal or - if lodged on paper ballot sheets - are manually entered into the electronic system for counting. That is - all votes end up in electronic form before counting / preference distribution is done automatically by computer.

more info and source code from the electoral office and the government recommends continued use following a full review after the last election.

There are a couple of factors that meant electronic counting / voting were going to come sooner rather than later in the ACT: the useful base of some well regarded open source leaders + the ACTs difficult Hare-Clark preference distribution scheme (allowing the part of your vote unnecessary to elect your prefered candidate to go on and help elect your next prefered candidate).

+laughing at US politics paragraph+ Obviously the $200,000 cost of development of such an open, accurate, and secure system is clearly not high enough to give US governments' bank rollers the belief they are getting value for money from their political donations! Maybe Halliburton can develop such a system for use in the US for a billion or so?

I wonder what it would cost to put together an open-source consortium to design the thing from the ground up.

$125,000 and 6 months to develop and implement, including ballots in 12 languages or English audio for vision-impaired and illiterate voters.

But it would be pretty silly to start a project from the ground up when you can simply download the sourcecode. (Warning: 696 KB zip file)

By the way... does anyone have a figure for how much Diebold has billed the various state and local governments, combined? I'm concerned that it might be somewhat more than $125,000.

-

Why doesn't some company start up and open e-voting machine business?

This open-source system was developed by a number of well known names in the open source community - eg - Andrew Tridgell (Samba), Martin Pool (Apache), and Rusty Russell (ip-tables / netfilter).

This system is in active use. All elections for the ACT government in Australia are now run using this system. Votes are lodged either at an eVACS terminal or - if lodged on paper ballot sheets - are manually entered into the electronic system for counting. That is - all votes end up in electronic form before counting / preference distribution is done automatically by computer.

Obviously the $200,000 cost of development of such an open, accurate, and secure system is clearly not high enough to give US governments' bank rollers the belief they are getting value for money from their political donations! Maybe Halliburton can develop such a system for use in the US for a billion or so?

more info and source code from the electoral office and recommendation for continued use.

In the Australian Capital Territory, telemarketers are covered by the Door-to-Door Trading Act anyway, with the same hours as listed above. Some things (e.g. charities) are exempt, but that'll probably be the case with this list too. Getting calls inside those hours is still f$%(*&$ annoying; if it can't get them to leave you alone during the day as well then I don't see the point.

Also worth noting that the Australian Direct Marketing Assocation already has an opt-out form. A compulsory govt.-run one would be better, but in practical terms I doubt it'd make much of a difference.

A thought occurs to me just now. Using the information available here, one could theoretically program a GPS device that had an open API (or something along that line) to alert you whenever you enter a speed enforced zone. Even if it's just a visual alert (ie: GPS device has no audible capabilities), you'd know exactly when to go exactly the limit, and when it was okay to speed.

As a side note for those of you that have been saying "just don't speed", have you ever driven a car with a manual transmission? I'm just curious as I drive both an automatic and manual, and whenever I'm in the automatic, I speed far less than I do in the manual.

They:
-post on the website the location of all fixed and mobile speed cameras http://www.canberraconnect.act.gov.au/speedcameras /index.html
-have big signs saying "RED LIGHT AND SPEED CAMERA AHEAD" for fixed cameras

If you get nabbed with those conditions, you deserve your ticket.

I can say with complete certainty that slow drivers cause significantly more congestion than occasional problems caused by those going too fast.

I've recently moved to a new city where traffic is much slower than what I'm used to, and I have observed something I think is interesting. I think it's problem drivers that cause slow traffic, not slow traffic that causes problems.

Often, here, we get two lanes abruptly becoming one (link is pdf), with a minimum of warning. We also have absurdly low speed limits and lots of speed cameras, as a result, most people generally move at the same, slow, speed. However, when approaching these 'form one lane' spots, we have the 'good' drivers that form up nice and orderly and merge into the one lane flawlessly. We also have the 'bad' drivers, who stop in their lane and wait for a gap. These bad drivers cause other drivers to try and overtake behind them, snarling up traffic as it approaches the merge.

In my experience, if I end up following someone who just snarled up traffic by doing something dumb like that, when we get the the freeway, they'll be going 20km/hr under the limit. And the other way around, if I'm stuck behind someone, on a two-laned road, going 20km/hr under the limit, they more often snarl up traffic when approaching one of these stupid merge things.

So maybe it isn't slow speeds that cause congestion, but rather, bad drivers not behaving themselves.

No thanks, but you could run your elections on Australian software

Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting

Australians designed a system two years ago that addressed and eased most of those concerns: They chose to make the software running their system completely open to public scrutiny.

There is still time, America... An electronic voting and counting system (EVACS) is alive and well in the Australian Capital Territory election on 16th October 2004. The source code for the Linux based system is available for anyone to check, and this is it's second outing: It was used in the election of 2001.

There is still time, America... An electronic voting and counting system (EVACS) is alive and well in the Australian Capital Territory election on 16th October 2004. The source code for the Linux based system is available for anyone to check, and this is it's second outing: It was used in the election of 2001.

And it contains the Australian Capital, Canberra.

Ask the ACT government if you don't believe me:
http://www.act.gov.au/

CapitOls happen to other people.

Clearly you have not taken the time to understand what is involved in casting a vote under the ACT's Hare-Clark voting system. I suggest that you follow sholden's advice and find out
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/hare.html

It's Australian Capital Territory (ACT) you insenstive clod!

If you're trying to implement something like an STV (Single Transferrable Vote) system then a computer is helpful (the Auzzie's use the Hare system http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Hare.html
If you use the STV Meek's method, http://web.archive.org/web/20020328140457/http://w ww.bcs.org.uk/election/meek/meekm.htm
then you HAVE to use a computer.

Once you have written it, you have to check it.
Obviously there are all of the usual user - interface issues; data validation; etc
In particular for the STV elections, you have to check
- simple ties
- multiple ties
- multiple ties over multiple years
- random number generation (Meek's method ultimately breaks ties this way)
- handling of large numbers of voters, voters & candidates
- etc
(I'm sure there's lots of issues I haven't listed)

fairly non-trivial, and it usually helps to get someone experienced in designing/building/testing voting software involved

Sorry to rain on the parade here, but EVACS wasn't used for a national election (federal elections and referenda are conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission). It was used in the 2001 ACT Legislative Assembly election, where about 220 000 voters selected 17 representatives. Of those votes, 16 559 votes were actually cast using the system - less than 10 percent.

I would be more impressed if it had been used in an election for a bicameral parliament like New South Wales. The above the line/below the line ballot paper used for the upper house (also used for the Senate and NSW local government elections) would be a greater challenge, given the large number of candidates (the "tablecloth" ballot paper of the 1999 NSW election is a classic example).

What language is it written in?

C

Where is the source kept?

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/evacs.tar.gz

Here in Canberra (Australia) all land is leased from the government for 99 years (see http://www.actpla.act.gov.au/plandev/land_leasing/ info/). These leases are due to expire in something like 2022. This doesn't really change the high cost of "buying" a house, even though you would currently be buying it with less than a fifth of 99 years left on the lease. People feel like they own the land, and you can bet that they would moan if the government took up their option of not renewing the leases. In fact, this topic continually reappears every so often, and people regularily moan about it. People expect the government to automatically grant another 99 year lease at no cost (which is what will probably happen), and if they don't, there will be much moaning and wailing... and nashing of teeth.

You mean like here in Canberra, Australia?

Linux desktop computers running open source (GPL) electronic voting software, burning the votes AND keystroke logs (to verify each vote if necessary) to CD-ROMs providing an "electronic" paper trail?

It is at least as safe, if not safer, than paper-and-pencil voting. As society continues to move towards staring at computer displays 24/7 electronic voting becomes an inevitability out of inertia, so it may as well be done right.

Barto

Not As Such.

The data about the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) election, the open-source software, the open-source operating system it ran on, and the open-source compiler that compiled it all is available via the makers, Software Improvements Pty Ltd.

The independant review, lab results of testing, and report on how it all worked in practice are available through the ACT Electoral Commission.

Not so much a well-oiled Chevy as a Holden Monaro which in the US is called a Pontiac GTO. As the GM site says, What Makes an American Legend? But it doesn't say the answer - good Aussie Engineering. Oi! Oi! Oi!

Here's a picture of 'lucky' by the way: Here

Here in Canberra, we recently had some fairly significant bushfires (Brushfires to US readers.. though I agree with a slashdot poster of a few months back, who thought that brushfire sounded like a problem caused by overactive grooming...).

As part of the fires, one of our wonderful nature parks ( Tidbinbilla) has lost all but one of their Koalas. Now that leaves are starting to come back onto the trees once more, it might be a good time to try and acquire some more koalas.. This would seem to be an ideal opportunity to bring back a koala population into the area.

I suspect though, that the costs might be somewhat prohibitive, and I'm not really sure about territorial habits of Koalas, so there might be other factors that would make transferrel difficult.

Red.

eVACS is open source and has already been used in some Australian elections. I did a research project on electronic voting systems last semester, and eVACS seemed to be the best current system. IMO, it would be much better with a voter-verified paper trail, though.

VoteHere a company that makes software to implement a particular voting crytographic scheme is the second outfit to release their source (the first was OVC).

The Third, I think.
Software Improvements did so in 2001. Source Code available through the ACT Electoral Commission. Open-source OS, Open-Source compiler, and runs on non-proprietary hardware too.

ACT is *the capital* city of Australia, seat of federal government, part time home of australian pollies (politicians), home of australian federal public service, houses adf hq (moved from vic barracks in melbourne - my home), home of various australian intelligence agencies (asis, asio) , location for diplomatic embassies, etc. Also home of Australian National University, Andrew Tridgell of Samba and rsync fame.

Canberra is *not underfunded*. It is in a sense an *artifical* city created as a political compromise to house the australian capital - after a fight broke betweem Victoria and Sydney around federation around 1901. The solution Canberra, a territory created in the NSW outback. Its sole purpose it to house government and its associated functions.

as for being less influential ... in australia its the national capital and houses the federal government - q.e.d. As for the rest of the world ... what does it matter?

The ACT is a administrative territory for the national capital, and we also had an OSS electronic voting system at our last election that is based on Linux

Xix.

The bill was pushed through last night (about 12 hours ago) the full hansard is not yet available but I will link to it when it comes up.

Something that is just as interesting as the full hansard is the minutes and the changes that were made to the bill that has now been passed.

The line

'as far as practicable prefer open source software'

was changed to

'as far as practicable consider open source software'

Full minutes:
Are here

Page 8 has the bill
Page 10 has the ammendments

Better yet, since members of the legislative assembly of the Australian Capital Territory are chosen using Hare-Clark, the ACT electoral commssion has contracted a company to build free software electronic voting and counting systems to conduct elections using the method.

PR systems like Hare-Clark are somewhat difficult to count by hand, and the most accurate algorithms, such as Meek's Method must be done by computer.

Incidentally, complexity is one of the major problems facing adoption of proportional representation schemes... the mechanics are somewhat difficult to explain to nontechnical voters, and thus debates on the issue lend themselves easily to spin and misrepresentation.

(The other major issue, of course, being that PR tends to threaten established politicians and other elites... here is an interesting site, for instance, that discusses the impact of PR in New York after communists and blacks were elected using the method back in the 1940s).

Or why not look to an open-source solution available under the GPLd that has already been used in parliamentary elections in Australia.