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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."

4 of 485 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Open source? by webtre · · Score: 3, Funny
    provide voting receipts which can be counted independently, by hand

    *cough* Florida *cough* *cough*

    --
    litigious bastards
    suck it sco!
  2. Re:Simple solution for e-voting by trailerparkcassanova · · Score: 4, Funny

    This could greatly improve efficiency of vote buying. The money for the vote could be transfered directly into your account.

  3. Re:My goodness! by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Funny

    Except you will have some voters who will think that:
    - they could vote twice, once with each method
    - that one was just a practice vote and the other was one that counted
    - are confused that there are two voting methods and don't know what to do, so don't vote at all
    - paper discriminates against tree huggers and caters to the logging community
    - electronic voting discriminates against technology luddites and caters to the techno-savvy

  4. Re:Open source? by hazem · · Score: 3, Funny

    dyslexic chads maybe....

    Right, but LA OGRE was not a candidate....

    Wait, maybe he was!