Demo of Free Software Voter-Verifiable Voting

Lulu of the Lotus-Ea writes "The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is holding a demonstration of its Free Software voting system in Santa Clara, California on April 1, 2004 (yeah, I know the date, but it's not a joke). An announcement on the OVC homepage has further details. The Sourceforge hosted EVM2003 project of the OVC has produced touchscreen and vision-impared interface voting systems that produce visually inspectable (or machine-aided audio verification) paper ballots. As well, OVC will demonstrate systems for reconcilliation and reporting of precint results, and provide handouts and a presentation explaining the virtues of a publicly inspectible system with a tamper-proof paper trail."

Comments

go OVC!

[linoleo]

With Diebold's flaws being exposed, it may be a good time to effect some real change. What are the chances of this being actually adopted for some election?

Re:Excellent news

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Yes, not a bad idea. Here in Ireland they've snuck in a full blown e-voting system, kicking off soon. The first anyone knew about it was when ads on TV started appearing declaring that "we're already doing it" comparing e-voting to turning on light switches and kettles. I've already published a few articles in both local and national newspapers here, speaking out strongly against the lack of an auditable paper trail, but there seems to be no stopping the beaurocratic wheels once they start spinning. Still, it'll be nice to have an alternative to hand once the funny numbers and scandals start rolling in.

Re:This has everything that Diebold Lacks

[Lumpy]

and is why it will not be adopted by the United states in any state.

sorry, but Even though most of the citizens of the USA (me being one of them) prize honest and fair elections, there is no way in hell that Diebold or any State will allow this to be used in elections.

The fact that it eliminates any chance of ballot stuffing or other hokey pokey that the Powers that be rely on has doomed it to death.

Yes I know, there are NO reported cases of ballot stuffing here int he states to back up my claims, but many MANY citizens feel the same as I do... we are all looking at the fiasco that is lforida and how it looked that the Bush Brothers made sure there was a win there that really hit home with many americans...

I would absolutely love a 100$ open system with verifications and audit trails voting system...

It's just a sad reality that the USA needs to be called the United Corperations of America...

Re:About Damn Time

[laird]

Alan Dechert, the founder of the Open Voting Consortium, has been working on this since late 2000. The result is a project that has tons of members, some very credible people on board, and has produced a working voting system that's being demonstrated publicly on April 1. (The theory is that April 1 is a slow news day, so something "weighty" like voting should get good coverage)

To quote from the web site's "about us" page:

The Open Voting Consortium has broad national and international participation. In addition, the following are our Directors so far.

Alan Dechert, President and CEO

Alan Dechert has been a software test engineer and application developer for the past 15 years. In 2001, with Dr. Henry Brady of UC Berkeley, he co-authored a voting modernization proposal for California. This proposal was designed as an in-depth study of the voting system, including development of reference open source voting software. In 2003, along with Dr. Douglas W. Jones (Univ of Iowa) and Dr. Arthur Keller (UC Santa Cruz), he founded the Open Voting Consortium (OVC). He currently serves as President and CEO of the OVC.

Arthur Keller, Vice President and COO/CFO

Arthur Keller is a computer science professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Dr. Keller has taught computer science at Brooklyn College (CUNY), University of Texas (Austin), Helsinki University, University Blas Pascal (Cordoba, Argentina), as well as Stanford University. He is an expert in database systems and computer security. He is a successful entrepreneur having been involved with a number of startups. He also has experience with national media: For example, he was recently on the Lehrer News Hour talking about wireless security issues. Professor Keller serves as the OVC's Vice President, Chief of Operations and Chief Financial Officer.

Doug Jones, Vice President and CTO

Douglas W. Jones has been a Professor of computer science at the University of Iowa since 1980. He has gained considerable expertise in the area of voting technology having served on the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems since 1994. He chaired the board from Fall 1999 to early 2003. This board, appointed by the Secretary of State, must examine and approve all voting machines before they can be offered for sale to county governments. His expertise in this area has put him in great demand since the election mess in 2000 - frequently quoted in the national media. Professor Jones serves as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for the Open Voting Consortium.

Amit Sahai

Amit Sahai is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He has a broad range of interests throughout theoretical computer science -- strongly interested in fundamental problems relating to security, as well as those relating to complexity theory, algorithms, learning theory, and the theory of error-correcting codes. Dr. Sahai has served on program committees for conferences in Europe as well as North America involving computer security issues. He is leading the security assessment group for the Open Voting Consortium.

Peter Maggs

Besides being a law professor (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and a member of the District of Columbia Bar with expertise in intellectual property law, Peter Maggs is a pioneer in computer interfaces for vision-impaired users. In the early 80s, he worked on speech interfaces for PCs and Apple Computers. He also oversaw the development of text to Braille software. He is helping the OVC to navigate the potential intellectual property minefields related to our open voting system development and deployment.

And the web site's "history" page:

History

The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) began with Alan Dechert's November 2000 idea for correcting the voting system. It has grown from a proposal to develop a pilot project in one county in California to a proposa for an in-depth nationwide study. Beyond that, the OVC

Votes only one side of the story

[spun]

I was watching 'Real Time with Bill Maher' the other night, and he had Gore Vidal on. Gore brought up the point that only one company does all the exit polling for all the news media nationwide, and there is absolute secrecy in how they do their polling. They could really say anything they want, and as long as it was close to the vote tallies, no one would question anything.

So we have the capacity, through Diebold and others, for massive vote fraud. And only one secretive company doing exit polling to verify things. Scary combination.