E-Voting Done Right - In Australia

tehanu writes "After all the furor over e-voting in America, Wired News has an article about e-voting done right in Australia. An important factor is that all of the software is open-source. The company responsible actually seems to have given consideration to the integrity of the democratic process, too - from the lead engineer: 'Why on earth should (voters) have to trust me -- someone with a vested interest in the project's success? A voter-verified audit trail is the only way to 'prove' the system's integrity to the vast majority of electors, who after all, own the democracy.' They also have scathing words for Diebold: 'The only possible motive I can see for disabling some of the security mechanisms and features in their system is to be able to rig elections. It is, at best, bad programming; at worst, the system has been designed to rig an election.' In general they are 'gob-smacked' by the whole situation with electronic voting machines in the US right now."

Comments

Re:real democracy

[danila]

I agree wholeheartedly. Personally I think that the state should be ruled by a group of philosophers (in Plato's terminology), basically by scientists and other specialists (engineers, generals for Defence Ministry, etc.). The emphasis should be made on the consensus-based decision-making, but voting should still be an option. These rulers should be well-educated and raised to be honest. The selection should be done in an objective and transparent way. Unfortunately, the idea is completely unrealistic today. :(