Should Voting Software Be Open Source?

jallen02 asks: "CNN has a quick little piece in their technology section about the electronic voting systems and their security. They ask, 'What about security?' with regards to the electronic voting systems. And then a researcher from AT&T labs is quoted in the article. Basically, saying the systems should be open sourced, and he quotes the party line for open source regarding security: more eyeballs means more flaws are found and fixed. The big question raised here is ripe for debate.. should electronic voting systems software be opened for the public to see?"

Comments

i don't think so

[tps12]

It's a nice thought: it would make a good high-profile proof of concept that could give open source the credibility it needs to succeed in the doggy-dog software market.

My only concern is that current open source methodologies may not be able to deliver the robustness and security required in a voting situation. Open source becomes strong through evolution, which necessarily means that the first users experience a lot of minor bugs that eventually get ironed out. Highly reliable bullet-proof systems need to be designed from the ground up.

We don't depend on open source for controlling drawbridges or handling air traffic control systems, and we shouldn't put something as fragile as our democracy in the hands of open source, either. It is not acceptible for my vote to be lost because of a bad fsck.

Re:i don't think so

[icewalker]

I would like to disagree your above statement ... to a point.

You make valid points with the air traffic control system, but you also failed to mention that this system is highly antiquated and is in serious need of an overhaul. Drawbridges (at least where I live) are still controlled by people.

Open source provides something that a closed system doesn't, an open mind. No one person, or committee of people, can see the whole problem and come up with a solution. The more eyeballs looking at the code, the more bugs will be found. The more new ideas will be generated. Yes, there is a crawling period while the foundation is built. But you can also test the software on a smaller scale in a smaller community. The ramifications of failure will be smaller and the bugs can be worked out. And in a smaller community, you can have people back up the system with a hand count.

And lastly. Let's assume that some company did develop a voting system that was used. Would you really want a single entity in such a power role. What if it were Microsoft, IBM, or heaven forbid Oracle or SUN? Could you trust the system? I mean really trust, more than 90% trust it? Probably not.

Large companies have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted with the power they wield. Learn from History and trust the people to do what is right. Having the code open to everyone to see if akin to the Freedom of Information Act. It's out vote, it's our duty, it should be our code!

Yes, yes, yes, yes

[scotpurl]

Somehow PGP and GPG are open source, and somehow no one call the security of these tools into question. The only reasons you don't want to offer the source is if 1) there are security holes, or 2) you have no intention of fixing the security holes.

The problem here is that the system involves hardware -- which will likely not be open source because of patent constraints, and that it should allow the voter 1) to remain anonymous, 2) to provide a method for the voter to double-check their votes prior to submission, and 3) to provide a method for the voter to verify that their votes were cast and counted correctly in the final totals. All of this means that it can't be a purely electronic method. The voter must take away something with them.

If something like this -- the combination of open source software and patent-free hardware could be assembled, at a reasonable, inexpensive price, it would be a wonderful gift to the democracies of the world.

maybe it should be implemented first

[jilles]

It's funny that this debate rages in a country that has seen severe problems with a severely outdated and erroneous voting infrastructure. Nobody has problems there with (proprietary) punch card machines but as soon as computers are involved everybody gets worried. Arguably it wasn't technology that failed during the last elections but the process after the election during which both parties spent several millions on campaigns trying to prove that they won rather than just recounting the votes (which was an option all along) or holding a state wide reelection (which even in third world countries is common practice in case of doubt).

I'm sure there is room for an open source voting system next to the many excellent commercial products available (which outside the US are widely being used and which tested in practice). Let the market decide. Let the government focus on certification rather than specific products. Voting machines (electronic and mechanical) should meet certain standards with respect to reliability, ease of use, accessibility, acceptable margin of error etc. Any standard in this area is better than none (which currently seems to be the case).

People trust their life to certified proprietary medical software, nasa launches billions worth of equipment using certified proprietary software, if you travel by car, you are using tons of certified proprietary embedded software. The keyword is certification. We trust this software because independent third parties have assessed that the software does what it advertises to do in a sufficiently reliable fashion.

Certification is currently uncommon in commercial software engineering. Not in the last place because most so called software engineers are not even qualified to tie their shoelaces properly. Any idiot who has read VB for dummies can claim to be a software engineer.