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Australian Voting Software Goes Closed Source
From Diebold's last-minute installation of uncertified software updates on its touch-screen election machines in California (leading to decertification of the company's machines in several California counties) to ethically troublesome relationships between politicians and the companies whose machines count the votes that determine their employment, the possible benefits of electronic voting seem swamped at the moment by objections (from simply prudent to caustically cynical) to its security and integrity.
Within the world of electronic voting, though, eVACS (for "Electronic Voting and Counting System") has been a rare success story both for open source development methodology and for the benefits that electronic voting can offer. The first generation of eVACS (running on Debian Linux machines) was developed starting in March 2001 in response to a request for bids by the Australian Capitol Territory Electoral Commission (ACTEC), and it was done on a budget of only AUS$200,000.
(The Australian Capitol Territory includes Australia's capitol city, Canberra, as well as surrounding suburbs and Namadgi National Park.)
Besides a respectable list of features driven by ACTEC's initial requirements (like support for 12 voting languages, and audio support for blind voters), eVACS has an advantage not enjoyed by many electronic voting systems: it's been successfully, uneventfully used to gather votes in a national election. The election in which it played a part went smoothly, and the eVACS system itself functioned as hoped.
This year, though, ACTEC asked Software Improvement to update the code for future elections, and Software Improvement decided to go them one better -- or, in the eyes of open source enthusiasts, one worse. The notes Ritchie was provided to deliver announced a change to the process under which the code is released; specifically, a switch from an open source license to something the company calls "controlled open source."
According to Software Improvement, simply releasing election-machine code under a liberal license such as the GPL is undesirable for two reasons: it means a loss of the company's intellectual property, and unfettered access could lead to a compromise of the voting system, if a determined cracker could find and exploit flaws in the code. (Software Improvement has not supplied any examples to show that this has happened, however.)
The company's use of "open source" would find little support from organizations like the Free Software Foundation or the Open Source Initiative. Software Improvement's idea of software openness is rather limited. Claiming that open source development is insufficient, even inimical to creating trust in election systems, the company now says that portions of eVACS's codebase will be released only to approved analysts, and in encrypted form, to enable viewing only for auditing purposes, rather than code contribution. Repeated viewings would be reported to the company, and only a limited number of views would be permitted before the code would self-destruct.
After delivering the prepared presentation, Ritchie took a few minutes to react to the changes it announced.
"Six hours ago, while I was reading through this on the plane," said Ritchie, "I was infuriated to read what it actually says."
Ritchie, though, is a computer-literate political science student at the University of California - Davis, and behind the Open Vote Foundation. He said he's decided to resume the project represented on that site, started with the intent to fork and bring to the U.S. the first generation, GPL'd version of eVACS.
"A long time ago, I read the first news report about Diebold, wondered why we didn't have open source election software for our voting machines. Eventually, I found out that Australia had apparently beaten us to it. It seemed like a good thing; the eVACS system was developed and released as GPL code, it was checked and rechecked by computer science people and all kinds of election officials. I said, 'Why don't we bring this to the U.S.? It's GPL, let's do it.'"
So he started the nonprofit Open Vote Foundation to bring the software to the U.S., specifically to California. Ritchie went to the meeting at the California Attorney General's office which resulted in decertification of Diebold machines in that state's 2004 election process, and his involvement in the fight against Diebold's secret-source voting machines is what led him to the open source eVACS; now he finds that the restrictions on the formerly GPL software are "even worse that that on MS's shared source. To call that open source is a bit dishonest."
"As of 6 hours ago," he said, "I've decided to start that again. It's not that hard; I mean how hard is it to say 'add one to this vote'? ... I remembered my old plan, and thought 'Let's take the old Australian code, fork it, and work from that -- and that is still an option. This is the great thing about open source software. If the old lead developer goes insane, you can always fork it, right?"
"A Dingo Ate My Vote."
I have been wondering lately if phsyically damaging these machines is not justified in a system that is supposed to cherish democracy to such a high degree. Civil disobedience is justified in some cases, and I believe that the use of unverifiable electronic voting machines with known vulnerabilities is just such a case.
Remember, Americans: Bring your voter registration card, and a sledgehammer for Diebold. They are stealing our freedom to vote, the very democracy over which so much blood has been spilled, and the corrupted political process is encouraging it via awarded contracts and almost silent acquiescence.
This crosses political affiliations and affects all Americans. I strongly believe that this must be stopped it by all means necessary or we will lose the ability to collectively affect the policies of our country, no matter how small your individual voice might be. This is zealous, without a doubt, but not all zealotry is bad. "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." And some things are too important to wait upon the justice system to work, even when it does. Sometimes men must take justice into their own hands.
Live free or die.
As Diebold has proven, having a private firm develop voting machine code can be detrimental to a democratic society.
More eyes checking on the code will find these problems faster than the machinations of a private corporation. Factor in corporate bias and the potential for 'back door' code is immense.
As cited, the CA elections showed how unusable the current offerings of e-machines are.
The only criteria is if it is easy to use, traceable, and accurate.
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Joseph Stalin
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
It's lovely someone wants to develop and fork something so exotic like an electronic voting system.
I just hope some government will understand that it's NECESSARY for such software to be FULLY Open Source, to guarantee democracy. How can I trust a device I don't know what is REALLY doing with my votes?
(And if someone is scared by the fact someone can maliciously change the program in the local voting machines just before the election...well,it's enough for THAT election to use a freezed code with a definite SHA1 or MD5 checksum...isn't it?)
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
...is they (we?) need to sort out the cheating and manipulation in normal 'visit the booths' type voting first.
That is all engineered anyway, so until that is really squeaky clean, how can you trust an electronic vote?'
Nick
... traditional voting with pen and paper!
The one who was a member of Skull & Bones.
You mean the one who uses KaZaA?
. . . is that the people leading the call for paper trails or even just paper ballots are either computing professionals or extremely technically literate. It's an interesting situation when technological "progress" is opposed by the elite rather than the traditional Luddites or the masses. Maybe we've all just read too much science fiction, but these machines sound like a solution even worse than the problem. I'd rather go through the Florida recount again than deal with the potentially catastrophic effects of the machines we use in CA.
I'm a little shocked, however, that more professed conservatives haven't spoken out against the new systems. To hear some of them tell it, the Democratic Party practically invented vote fraud, so you'd expect that they'd be much more suspicious of unverifiable, untrackable voting systems. But none of them seem to have anything to say on the matter - or have I not been looking in the right place?
But then I had the opportunity to speak with some senior managers from the company, who told me that, in fact, virtually the entire company was united behind dropping the electronic voting machines. They didn't trust the codebase (which was developed by a company Diebold acquired), felt the issue needed to be more deeply researched than it had been, and believed the bad publicity was hurting Diebold's reputation for security and reliability in its cash-management business.
But CEO Walden O'Dell disagrees. Virtually single-handedly, he has kept the e-voting project alive despite the vocal opposition of virtually everyone involved with it. When I asked the managers why they thought O'Dell was so strongly behind the project, their answers were blunt: "Politics."
If that's how management inside Diebold thinks, perhaps there's something to the conspiracy types after all....
- Watchful Babbler
Pretty hard, apparently. Diebold may be full of shitty programmers, bad designers, who knows.
But electronic voting is simply not a matter of:
if ( $vote eq 'y' )
$y++
else
$n++
it means a loss of the company's intellectual property
That's not the voter's problem.
and unfettered access could lead to a compromise of the voting system, if a determined cracker could find and exploit flaws in the code.
Or it could lead to anyone in the community blowing the whistle on propriatary back doors or the poor coding practices of the developers or....
These arguments are completely backwards.
how hard is it to say 'add one to this vote'?
Why not model these voting machines after ATM's? Every registered voter starts out with a single vote per election. Accounts are credited and debited and everyone is accountable... Automatic Voting Machine anyone?
Michalangelo Progr
I find the idea facinating that open sourcing your product is a binding contract with the community. You cannot back out unless interest in your product is so low that no one ever bothers to fork it. But time and again we see with efforts like this one or XFree86 that the idea of backing out of an open source stance is actually more harmful than remaining that way. While some will view this as a problem, as a consumer, I view it as a boon.
Even making motions toward open source without going all the way can result in "pseudo-forking" (I'm posting this from a Gnome desktop which was originally created in response to the original licensing terms of the Qt library upon which KDE was based).
It will be very interesting to see what the next few decades bring to the table in terms of open source business practices. I envision a sort of corporate ethics evolving around the benefits and dangers of open source development, and this can only be a healthy process. Much as I think RMS took leave of his senses in the mid-90s (who didn't), I have to say that he nailed it when he decided that the GPL would have the power to change the software industry. I doubt that any other legal tool has been able to so profoundly shape the future of business since the anti-trust laws of early last century.
Where are the specifications for this code?
What language is it written in?
Where is the source kept?
What platforms does it run under?
MoveOn.org is sponsoring a petition drive to urge U.S. voters to demand voter-verified paper ballots that can be audited and recounted if necessary. This is the ONLY solution.
A SECRET ballot means that the association between a specific person and a specific vote cast is vital to democracy. Doing otherwise can very easily lead to vote buying ("I'll pay you $x for proof you voted for my candidate!").
We need a specifications document laying out the requirements for this software, which platforms it runs on, etc.
We also need a copy of the existing code to (a) have a place to start from, (b) provide us something to look at and thus give us ideas for development methodologies, (c) give us a point of reference to use when lobbying congressmen, etc.
This must be on a paper trail so I know who I voted for. Election monitors (the people, one from each party, who literally looked over the shoulders of the people counting ballots in Florida) need to be able to verify the count afterwards in some statistically valid way.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
If the old lead developer goes insane, you can always fork it, right?
Yep. However, getting the politician's buy-in on certifying the fork will be problematic:
On the one hand, we have academia and open source developers pushing their idea. (Politicians aren't real comfortable around smart people or people with multiple piercings)
On the other hand, we have a group of respectible business men pushing their idea. (Politicians can relate to business men because they wear the same suits and ties, and many of them were business men themselves at one point or another)
Who is going to win? Hmmmm....
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I would hope that the Australian FOSS community would rapidly mount a two-pronged attack. First, is strong representations to the Australian Capitol Territory Electoral Commission about the impact of licensing changes. In addition to a discussion of the impact of the restrictions, I'd ask if changing the license didn't invalidate their contract. Second, I would hope that someone in Australia would fork the project itself.
at least use "therefore" correctly, jackass.
It's really pretty practical actually; it's impossible to get somebody all riled up for social change, put a sledgehammer in their hands and tell them "Now, that's *ONLY* for the voting machines. No hitting!" Witness the French "Revolution": once you tell Jimmy Rebel "go forth and smash!" he rarely stops where you want him to.
jaz
Death to Argument by Slogan!! (This post twice-encrypted with ROT-13. Replies not using same will be ignored)
That would allow the voting machine manufacturer to release the source, but not allow anyone to make a derivative work of it? In the general software world, it's kind of hard because you can't always tell where code came from, but in the realm of electronic voting, there are only a few players, and if you require them all to release their source, it would not be hard to spot someone who created a derivative work. Diebold can protect it's trade secrets and at the same time, the community could evaluate the source.
That of course still leaves the option of procedural fiddling(changing the vote counts after capturing etc) open, but it requires a lot more effort and a much larger chance of getting caught.
The original copyright-owners of the code have the right to change licenses -- whether to or from GPL or any other license. The "viral GPL" argument has to do with people other than the original author attempting to close the source-code for a product. If your product contains GPL code, you must either isolate and release that code, or you must make the containing product GPL. If, however, you own copyright to that code, you are free to change licenses -- you just can't enforce the new license on the users of the GNU license.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
"According to Software Improvement, simply releasing election-machine code under a liberal license such as the GPL is undesirable (because) ... unfettered access could lead to a compromise of the voting system, if a determined cracker could find and exploit flaws in the code."
Let's see: the audited access assures that no cracker can ever see the code, right?
And besides -- if we can't see the three-card-monte-man's hands, he can't cheat us?
The only argument that holds water is the IP/profit explanation I skipped in the quote above.
yech![this sig has been trunca
Check out GVI, the Graphical Voter Interface. It's free software in every sense, and I think it's pretty nifty.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
The Machine Lyrics:
I got a machine
And I took over the world
In one weekend
I took over the world
With my machine
I did it because
I was looking for a project
And it was either
Take over the world or learn French
So I took over the world
And next weekend
I can learn French
I got a machine
And I took over the world
But nothing changed
That wouldn't be fair
I called an election official to determine a way for my vote to be counted by hand. No such luck! Here in Georgia the absentee ballots are going to be scanned in by optical readers (thanks Diebold), and be uploaded via a card into the same database as the rest of the votes. At least there will be a record if a recount is called for though...
If paper isn't working, and computers aren't working, then you've still got that last solution: weapons. That doesn't look likely now, but one lesson that's been learned repeatedly in history is that people will only allow themselves to be screwed so many times.
I say we vote with the tea. Everybody, get your tea, and head to Boston. Maybe the second time's the charm.
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
They could have either done a rewrite, or have gotten all the original writers' permission.
Under the GPL, the original writers stil hold their copyrights. By modifying the code, they submit to the terms of the GPL, but what they write is still theirs. And if the original writer wants to do away with the GPL on a GPL-licensed work, he can contact the other authors, and since they each all hold unencumbered copyrights to their own works, a closed version may be made.
Even if they cannot get permission from all those who wrote the code, if they remove the code written by those who dissent, they can still close the work.
The GPL is a very solid license. It is also quite readable. You can read it at http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html.
"...only a budget of AUS$200,000 ..."
r eamcast box with a touchscreen suffice? have it run a simple web browser, have it verify the voter (perhaps some card sent to them post-voter-registration), and ++ some variable? write it out to compact flash (hey, we'll get redundant and use 2!). then have some trained monkey go around, pull the cards, and tally the numbers
i don't understand how it could be this expensive, exchange rates be damned, whatever
i don't see why this voting software needs to be so complicated? wouldn't some linux/*bsd/windows/mac/beos/atari/xbox/gamecube/d
the romans and greeks used rocks or sticks or whatever the fuck they could find on the ground, and voting worked. 1500 years later and it has to be so complex?
where did these software engineers go to school? have they never heard of occam?
vodka, straight up, thank you!
When (if at all) will the software be checked during a vote recount?
The software check will probably be a checksum. This will not validate the voters.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
That does no one any good. Now, if you were to carry a really strong magnet with you when you vote for a local election, then maybe something can happen. Just wave the magnet over the machine when you're voting for your mayor and then complain that the machine is screwed up. Do it on one, and have 3 friends do it on others.
The machines are screwed up, and the election gets tossed. Plus, only a minor election gets screwed up so it would be easier to re-hold the election.
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
I personally don't understand what the heck is wrong with optical scanners that use paper ballots. It's simple cost effective and you have a paper trail. You could setup some sort of a system that prints the ballots at each polling site to speed the prior setup currently needed. (right now the ballots are pre printed at outsourced printing companies...well at least in MN)
This push for touch screens confounds me. Being a gadget nut this goes contrary to all my instincts but when it comes to voting,(especially what happened in the last presidential ellection) I want easily usable, simple technology voting machines that in the end the voters intent is easily determined. If someone can't figure out how to fill in big ass circles with a marker on a piece of technology* that has been around for thousands of years then they dont deserve to vote anyway.
* paper for you slow folks
No, I'm serious. We should go back to punch cards. as was the standard here in California until 2002. Why? Because you can't degauss a piece of paper with an EMP, and it's simple.
This sig no verb.
It would have to take a LOT of pork and power to get your average "GPL idealist" to sellout, but the stakes are too high with voting software to allow corruption to be closed source! They claim they need to protect their "intellectual property" for security reasons when in fact security by obscurity has nothing to do with it, and they know it.
--
Power to the Peaceful
There is only one issue, and that's hardcopy records. No voting machine should be all electronic. It should spit out a receipt that tells you exactly how you voted. One copy to the voter, one copy goes into a sealed box.
In short, if any cheating occurs, we know immediately. Who cares how the software is developed? The only question is whether it can be verified after the fact.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I'm sort of imagining seeing video of Britney Spears saying, "I think we should just have faith in Diebold." (Sort of like the footage we saw in Fahrenheit 9/11 supporting Bush.) Now that would inspire some confidence.
#!/usr/bin/wish
.c
.l1 .l2
.b1 -text Kerry -command {incr kerry; .l1 configure -text $kerry} .b2 -text Bush -command {incr kerry; .l2 configure -text $bush}
.l1 .l2 .b1 .b2
set kerry 0
set bush 0
canvas
label
label
button
button
pack
What language is it written in?
C
Where is the source kept?
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/evacs.tar.gz
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Ok, fine, the company wants to protect its 'intellectual property'... That language alone should be enough to scare away most sane people.
Since when is the process by which we elect our leaders the 'property' of anyone except the citizenry? If a company wants to 'own' a process like that, fine, I just think that is obviously opposite that of a democratic, transparent process.
Surely, most people have an attention span long enough to grasp that simple concept.
I thought that I heard, South and central american elections are using open source on portable PCs already. Cart the machine into a village, set up solar panel, villagers vote and move to next village.
DIEBOLD LIES
www.verifiedvoting.org
and discretely stick them on the machine as you vote. Worked for me. Go vote early in the day (preferably early in the morning) to maximize the number of people who see it. Give stickers to your friends, however be careful since you'd be spreading the word that you're sticking these on the machines, which is probably a federal crime.
There have been unverifiable analog voting machines in use that do not keep a paper trail in use for the last 50 years. It never seemed to be a problem before.
In fact it was a "verifiable paper voting system" used in Florida that was the cause of much "corruption".
How's it gonna look on the news when you go to destroy a voting machine to "bring liberty back to the people" effectively cutting off people's right to vote?
If you don't like the system, get involved. Become a voting poll worker. Watch for corruption on the inside. That's all the civil disobedience you need.
In the 90's I was a pollworker, we would count the punch cards to be sure it matched the number we had issued (+/- 0.5%) and reported the discrepancy. We would also look for write-ins. We would also instruct and sometimes assist people to make their punches.
The touch-screen machines are a little easier for the people, a little less time in the booth. About 5% of the people mention they would like a paper trail. The overwhelming majority seem to actually trust the system. At the end of the day the technician told us the number of votes cast and we compared that to the number of people that signed in to vote and recorded the discrepancy. The technician wasn't sworn in at the same time as the rest of us but he said he worked for the police in between elections so I guess he was ok.
There will always be errors/bugs. The question is is there an acceptable error rate?
Is it even possible to accurately know the error rate? What about false registrations and denied registrations? There are lots of people who were caught in traffic and arrived to late, should their vote count?
The real unfairness in the process is that someone can win by a number of votes that is less that the known error rate, and having won by 0.01% (or perhaps lost by twice that much depending on which ballots you allow), takes 100% of the state's electors (who are the people who actually elect the president).
Let the people trust the computers for elections. They trust them to keep track of their social security, to issue their pay checks, to fly their airplanes and even to carry their email. It will always be you vote, we count (which is more likely attributable to "Boss" Tweed than Joe Stalin).
If you want the election to rpresent the will of the people it would be better to use the popular vote than the electoral vote. The electoral college method of counting the vote introduces much larger errors than the technology used to collect the votes.
it has been the last couple of days.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
"Yes, destroying the voting machines in not civil disobedience... turning them into a beowolf cluster to play Doom 3 on, now that is civil disobedience."
Except you'd be in a tight deathmatch, frag your opponent with a headshot from behind for the final kill, but somehow you'd end up on the ground headless and they'd be doing the victory dance.
I was assigned this task by my employer and this is actually his intellectual property, but in the name of GPL, I herby open the source:
void main (void){
int mKerry = 0;
int mBush = 0;
char mVote;
char mElectionDay;
do {
printf ("Who do you want to vote for (press K for Kerry)?\n");
mVote = getch ();
if (mVote == 'K')
mKerry++;
else
mBush++;
printf ("Is it still Election Day (press N for no)?\n");
mElectionDay = getch();
}while (mElectionDay != 'N');
if (mBush >= mKerry)
printf ("The winner is Bush!\n");
else
printf ("The winner is Kerry!\n");
}
If you must choose from Aor B, Vote for George Kerry, because John Bush is just plain evil...
:
:
Positions for important issues
George Kerry
1.Supports war in Iraq, will add more troops if needed.
2. Strongly supports the Patriot Act
3. Supports Big government spending on various nanny state programs
John Bush
1.Supports war in Iraq, will add more troops if needed.
2. Strongly supports the Patriot Act
3. Supports Big government spending on various nanny state programs
As you can see George Kerry is certainly a better candidate.....
In reality, the only way this situation will change is to start voting for third party candidates. The duopoly has gotten out of hand. The conventions are not even used for discussing the parties postion on issues, nor are they used to select a candidate. They have degenerated into a 3-day infomercial paid for by the taxpayers. I will be voting for Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) this time around as I refuse to eat the corporate dog food. Better a clear conscience and a "wasted" vote than supporting
either of the cluetards...
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Aren't absentee ballots usually not counted until after the election is pretty much determined anyway?
I suppose a significant number of absentee ballots might shake up the system a little, but it would have to be a very significant number.
"The problem with current electronic voting systems is that there is no way to check what you have voted for. Therefore this statement is not necessarily entirely accurate. If anything, you're denying a large group of people the feeling that they have cast their ballot."
If I hadn't already used my last mod point, I'd bump you up.
In order to vote absentee you must swear by penalty of perjury that you are on active duty or otherwise outside the U.S.
It is a criminal offense to vote absentee while remaining in the states.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...Dubya gets elected to a third term.
Having open source is nice, but it isnt a requirement ... random spot checks of the paper receipts will show irregularities. Even with open source system the digital representation of the data is still entirely too easy to jimmy.
... but given the choice I would go for the second.
Best thing would be to have both open source and paper verification
Is there any sort of open source license that would allow the voting machine manufacturer to release the source, but not allow anyone to make a derivative work of it?
Sadly, no.
All open-source licenses protect only the rights of redevelopers, and offer no protection for the rights of original inventors. The field is massively slanted against the originators of novel software concepts retaining any kind of control over their creations. The right to fork is the sacred mantra of open-source, enshrined and repeated again and again in the licenses, whereas the originator is offered nothing under the license.
Of course, if the originator is in need of additional hands and eyeballs, he can benefit too. However, even then the enshrined right to fork means that control over his concepts may be wrested from him by a vocal redeveloper with a large following.
It's pretty sad that open source discourages inventors of original software from opening their code, owing to this massive skew against them in favor of redevelopers.
Incidentally, there was a half-hearted attempt to address this issue in the Artistic License, which had precisely the objective of ensuring that "artists" retained a semblance of "artistic control" over their software. It really highlights how bad the situation is, that the license had to be couched in terms of artistry, because open-source simply does not acknowledge that invention in software has any merit whatsoever. Anyway, it failed because it had no teeth since it had to allow modification and redistribution to qualify as open-source, which of course means loss of control.
Pretty sad. No crumbs for original inventors.
Oh, wait. That's a feature.
Donno where you live, but in Virginia, for instance, that is SO NOT true. There is a whole list of reasons that are OK, from being away at school to being out of town on business to just having a long workday.
For Virginia's rules, visit: http://www.sbe.state.va.us/Election/AbsenteeVoting /absente1.htm
Many states have similar rules; a quick trip to you state's web site will get you the scoop...
... in some states. The R and D parties have passed laws that make it ludicrous to try and get a third party or independent candidate actually listed on the ballot. It varies, some states are incredibly difficult, some are just annoying. And you combine that with the collusion of big money mainstream media having a virtual lock out of any news on third partys and independents, you have in essence a hijacked government, controlled almost completely by two DEFINETLY for-uber-mega-profit organizations.
Anyway, with this article, I still think computerised voting is totally unnecessary, we just plain don't need it, don't need the cost, it is BILLIONS of dollars nationwide, we don't need computers to add simple sums at the precinct level,so just say *no*, no open source, no closed source, no source at all.
Some things computers are good for, others are an expensive hindrance. "Ohh shiny" and "we are in the computar age" don't cut it, computerised voting is "gadgets for gadgets sake", and someone's profits for the hardware and software, not because it's needed. Voting results should be reviewable with any set of biological eyeballs, anything else will be blackbox voting. It's bad enough with the stupid mechanical machines, we don't need anything beyond paper and pen, and a locked wooden box with a slit in the top to receive the ballots, and that's it.
Want to make it more fair? Institute at least a 24 hour voting period, and do the "ranking" method of voting, and have a "no one" option as well.
Another example of how the global corporate empire games the system. Trick the respected presenter of the paper with GPL long enough to get headlines that will be quoted indefinitely in defense of the rigged software. Then close the source, and "revise" it to better serve the agenda of the vote fixers. When the presenter rebuts, the story will be heard, and understood, only by the geeks, and the news media will find little reason to feature that kind of story, even though it's the real story, and the deception is much more interesting and newsworthy. Any more questions about the value of "democracy" to these corporations, and their global masters?
--
make install -not war
I think electronic voting is insane. I didn't even like the old mechanical voting booths. If a clueless operator starts putting the tally cards in backwards your vote is lost, and you don't even know it.
You manually put holes in a card, and drop it into a locked ballot box. Someone has to do a lot of dirty work to make that box disappear, or alter the cards. Plus there are no ink marks that can be erased or smeared or whatever. (Don't forget to remove any hanging chads, lest an evil soul tries to glue it back in place)
Also, paper does not have source code.
Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
What are you doing on /.? Doom 3 is out, you do not have a fast enough machine and you are waiting until OCTOBER to get one? Man ... your priorities??? :-)
Typical Microsoft "embrace and extend" code: that only runs on MS-DOS or under emulation on NT. The getch() call isn't standard C or POSIX, so that program won't run as written on any standard UNIX system, including Microsoft's hosted UNIX they're considering including in Longhorn.
And how do you keep absentee ballots anonymous?
A Nony Mouse
... then we'd have fifteen different interfaces that all do pretty much the same thing, but they would each have their quirks and none of them would do it quite right. The software would take five years to develop from scratch, and at the end of it we would have a huge virtual machine-based system that executes XVL (Extensible Voting Language), which is horribly complex and slow, but allows for very fancy voting platforms, in theory. But as a result, the old voting hardware will be too slow and limited to run it, so we'd need all new machines based on the latest processors. We'd also have to wait a while for all the drivers to become available, and the Debian Voting Project wouldn't release the code until it ran properly on *every* platform, including PDP11 and ZX81. Meanwhile the FireVulture project will aim to develop a super-lightweight version of the codebase that will be fast and sleek, but it will run into problems due to schisms in the team, caused by differences of opinion about whether the code should be LGPL, GPL or BSD license.
The eventual system will work very well and be extremely stable, but by the time it is in widespread use the developers will have started on Version 2.0, which is a total rewrite from the ground up (they now feel they understand the problem much better, and can see that the original API needs to be redesigned). So Version 2.0 is totally incompatible with Version 1.0, and much confusion ensues as States try to decide which "standard" to go with.
Meanwhile, Microsoft comes out fast and dirty with Microsoft Vote and although it doesn't work too well at first (version 1.0 has a glitch where everyone who's first name begins with "L" is deleted), it works "well enough" and with the buckets of money that MS dumps on the States for new MS-compatible hardware, they quickly gain dominance in the market.
The Open Source projects try to shift their focus to work with the MS hardware, chasing Microsoft's lead and running into a brick wall with the closed XML format that is encrypted and depends on hardware DRM to work.
Apple brings out the iVote, which is a small device that lets you simply plug into an Apple voting machine anywhere and vote quickly and easily. Plus, it works. And quite a few people buy it and rave about how great it is, but because only Apple is allowed to make the actual voting machines, very few of them get manufactured and as a result the iVote falls into betamax territory.
In the end, everybody uses MS Vote and complains about how closed it is, the Open Source crowd eventually gets their act together and comes out with a fantastic system that kicks butt but nobody cares any more, and that was that for the United States of America, thanks and goodnight.
I find this very interesting indeed, and I'd like to believe that it's true. Do you (or anyone else) have any corroborating evidence?
Without some proof, it's probably just libel.
If you do have some proof, I'd suggest you bring it to the attention of your atourney general.
An instance involving the East India Tea Company in Boston Harbor comes to mind.
Who cares if you can get the source? Unless you can create a binary from a signed copy of the source on your own machine, then upload the compiled binary to the voting machine, how can you trust it? How do you know a secret final patch hasn't been added at the last minute?
Paper trail is the only way, open or closed source doesn't matter. If I can walk away with a record of my vote, I'll be happy. If you added a little cash register printer and a roll of tape inside the machine and spot-audit one percent of the machine results, I'll be even happier.
But if I can use an ink marker to make an indelible mark on a piece of paper, and have the paper counted physically by a dozen people, I'll be completely happy.
Paper! Ink! It works!
This whole sorry saga reminds me of a brutally frank piece of advice my Systems Analysis lecturer gave to the class.
"Give your client a number of possible designs for the system. If we were completely honest, one of those designs might be for a purely manual process. But we're computer people, so of course we only provide computer-based solutions."
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
http://sourceforge.net/projects/votehelp/
It currently appears to be little more than a gleam in one activist-programmer's eye. But this project - or one like it - should be pursued at all cost. There is nothing at all precluding an open source voting machine from superseding Diebold's pathetic offering. I'm sure progressive cities like Portland, OR would be open to such an offering, at least at the grass-roots. We are learning a lot about the value of OSS from organizations like Free Geek.
-- thinkyhead software and media
... One copy to the voter, ...
Right, let's encourage vote selling.
One copy only, and it goes into a sealed box. The copy in the sealed box is the vote. The "voting machine" is a ticket printer.
I can't understand where all the confusion is coming from on the E-Voting issue. The machines are supposed to address a problem:
Problem:
Present a list of voting choices in any number of languages, in audio for those who are blind, give them an opportunity to change their vote if they made a mistake, give them a second (and a third) chance to confirm their vote, and then make sure that their vote is counted.
It sounds like a great application for computers. After all, multi-lingual GUIs are common and practical, and computers give you the chance to change your mind before you finalize the vote.
Solution:
Use the computer to format the ballot, so that you don't have to have different versions for every language, and so that the voter can confirm and reconfirm the votes before finally committing them to a paper ballot. The computer then "fills in " the ovals on the ballot, eliminating improperly filled or inadequately filled circles, at which point the voter can look at the paper and quadruple check that he voted for the right people, and put that ballot into a "dumb" optical scanner that JUST COUNTS. Nothing to tamper with, nothing to worry about - you could have 5 terminals to every counter, which would save money over the current system and would still guarantee (actually enhance) the accuracy of the vote.
It's almost like somebody DOESN'T WANT the vote to be counted properly.
And was the French Revolution such a bad thing in the long run? Look at the British, we had a revolution and didn't kill all the aristocrats.
:)
Not coincidentally, I'm still technically a subject of the Crown, not a citizen of a republic
I don't know why you think this, but it's wrong. In fact, some states actualy require absentee balots.
On the other hand, in a close election actualy showing up might be a better idea, since an absentee balot could be 'lost' in the mail.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
One real problem with eVACS is that, to my knowledge, it doesn't produce voter-verified receipts yet (please let me know if I'm wrong). Thankfully, the new OSS/FS site identifies this as one of the first things to be added. As noted by places such as the verified voting site, voter verified receipts are a critical need. In fact, I'd argue that only the counted paper ballots should actually count, and make sure that the vote-creating and vote-counting systems are separate (using some sort of standard representation on the paper, so that you can have different groups re-implement each side).
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Me again. That my friends was a demo of how all the eyeballs reading the code can fix bugs. I got busted within 2 hours of open-sourcing my e-voting system!
You think MLK didn't violate any 'criminal' laws? how did he end up in jail? They are using a different definition of 'civil' here.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Um. I cant believe 233 people went to great lengths on how to fork code and modify licensing, dont change it, it works...
How about just splitting a state's electors along popular vote lines? In Presidential-2000 election 50% of Minnesota's 10 electors would have gone to Bush. (There are already a few (2?) states who do this).
It requires no changes to the Constitution and ensures that low-population states (Wyoming/Dakotas) don't wind up as a state-sized waste dump for the rest of the country.
Open Source is desirable, but is not in itself a panacea. For example, impeccable code could be published, but something entirely different could be installed.
That is not to say that a paper system prevents dubious outcomes. It's just that they are more likely to come to light, and be contested (as far as a supreme court, maybe...)
I really cannot understand why this craze about voting machines: what is wrong with using pen and paper?
I do not see any problem, it works without a glitch almost in the whole Europe.
Here in Switzerland we vote at least 10 times a year with pen and paper and we do not have to deal with horrors like the 2000 USA election or all this voting machine discussion.
Why bother with electronic voting machines?
I was actually able to determine that the popularity of Evanescence is an indirect result of the French Revolution. Make of that what you will.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
American felons don't get a vote. Spare me the knee-jerk reaction, slashdot, most of the people with felony convictions did not make their mother-in-law shut up with a magnum (tempting!), rob a bank or rape little girls. Most of them were caught with a small bag of grass, committed multiple minor offenses or "cheated" taxes. Why some were thrown into the slammer for writing visual basic scripts :-) or cheating phone companies out of billions of vapor profits. With MPAA/RIAA criminalizing America, with legislation like the DMCA and the Patriot Act, how far do you think your felony conviction is away??
Why you ask, can't felons vote [or even leave the country!!]?? Who do you think someone would vote for that was locked away for smoking some grass and burning a couple of CDs?
Mod me down, I can afford the karma.
Yea!
Fight for your right to BELIEVE you are free...
How's that? A voter in North Dakota/Wyoming has WAY more influence in presidential elections than a voter in California. Same for the Senate. In fact, the only place where South Dakota and Wyoming are not overrepresented is the House of Representatives.
Cry me a river about how small-population states have to do such-and-such. There may very well be more toxic waste dumps in Wyoming than in California. But I'd bet you real money that there's more people living within 30 miles of a toxic waste dump in California than in Wyoming. It may suck to live in a state with a toxic waste dump. It sucks even worse to live on top of one. Sorry, cowboy, California's got you beat in the waste dump sob story department.
Frankly Wyoming has way too much influence over federal policy. The thing to do would be to ratchet back its electoral and Senate overrepresentation. Maybe hand one or two of those votes to people who have no voice at all in Congress, like Washington DC? If you want people to take your "we don't have enough influence" story seriously, I suggest you try explaining this to the residents of DC until either you convince them or you think maybe your lot isn't so bad after all.
Few things are more important than open-source for electronic voting machines.
Having a voter-verifiable paper audit trail is one of them.
Open source does not equal perfect, it just means much much more likely to be close to perfect.
Even with bad software, a voter-verified paper audit can preserve the integrity of the election.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Wait, so he's gonna take some code and fork it. Great. And where would that code be? Oh we've got a spiffy web site... but no code to be found.
Nothing to see here... move along.
Agreed. Our current governmental systems are deeply flawed.
Luckily, there are alternatives. 'Semi-direct democracy' (or 'hybrid democracy' and 'liquid democracy' as some call it) seems like a more suitable option for our current communications technology. AMPU, and a few other projects are aiming to implement something like that.
First, a disclaimer. I'm a software engineering graduate from ANU, so I know Dr Clive Boughton quite well. Any ANU student who's been through his courses will have had eVACS burned into their brain, since he uses it as a case study for just about everything... So, having sat through endless hours of lectures on eVACS, I offer the following executive summary:
eVACS is two things: a voting system, and a counting system (the 'V' and the 'C', respectively). As I understand it, the counting system was the open-source portion, although my memory could be foggy in that regard. It's ironic that many posts to this topic refer to the voting system (security of votes, etc.).
From what I recall, eVACS was developed under software engineering best practices (since Clive is a software engineering teacher). I can't remember the exact methodology, but it was an object-oriented analysis and design method, perhaps Executable UML. This is what enabled them to complete the project on time and with a good level of correctness. (For anybody who's ever worked to a "hard" deadline, they don't come much harder than the date of an election!) Hmm. Now I recall, it could have been that two versions were developed in parallel: one using the object-oriented stuff, and the other using traditional structured analysis and design. Maybe I should have paid more attention in lectures...
I guess the question is, did eVACS ever gain anything from being GPL? I doubt that many people have contributed changes back to it, since Software Improvements was able to change the licence, implying that they hold all the copyrights. People may have looked at it and said 'Cool', and of those people, maybe a small fraction have analysed it in detail.
The problem, however, is that it's hard to quantify who's taken a serious look at the code and found it to be correct. Now, Clive is a software engineer, so quantifying things is important. Of course, there's the usual bunch of auditors, election officials and ANU software engineering students who have been willing to look, but that doesn't require the GPL. In fact, all it requires is a licence akin to what they're changing it to...
If we (as the wider community) can convince Software Improvements that a GPL'd version will be more correct than the closed version, then I'll bet that they'll open it back up again. (I'll even petition Clive directly.) However, we actually need eyeballs on that code, so who's up for it? You'll may need to know Executable UML and the intricacies of the Hare-Clark voting system... You could also convince them that a GPL'd version is better on the grounds that software should be free (as in... free software), but I'm not sure how well that will go down.
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).
Australian Capital Territory, and the capital city is Canberra, you ignorant American.
They are being employed to write a voting system for the AEC to own and use, NOT to write a voting system and license it to the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission).
I'm a left-libertarian myself, but poor Badnarik has got to do something about that last name. It makes him sound like he's about to start shouting 'GET MOOSE AND SQUIRREL' any second.
But now that manufacturing is becoming more and more automated, and the pool of laborers is growing so quickly, labor is worth less and less and less, and physical resources those people sit on is worth more and more.
So as the decades wear on in this century, you can expect violence and genocide to become more and more frequent as responses to civil disobedience of any sort. The people of impoverished country X aren't going to put up with my exploiting them anymore? We'll, just kill them all and import workers from impoverished country Y.
Civil disobedience works with humans, but as society becomes more and more regimented and mechanical, it becomes more inhuman.
Vote for the candidate shown on this pop-up window and win a $50 gift certificate fron Target!
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Absentee ballots aren't counted unless the election is close.
Absentee ballots are counted. Period.
In some jurisdictions they're counted before the polls close and their count goes out immediately after closing time, before the rest of the votes are counted. In others they might not show up on the count for days. But they DO get counted.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I was thinking it would be great to have a paper ballot outside of every election station. This way we could see if any voting fraud was going on. This is something we could do in the Nov. 2004 election just targeting E-voting districts and only for the presidential race, you can only pick between kerry and bush thus eliminating a lot of time counting the unofficial votes. It would also be interesting to see who the 3rd party voters would pick between bush and kerry. However, it's also possible to duplicate the exact election with all candidates. This could be done with volunteers from both the republican party and democratic party, with the sole goal of making sure the e-voting is accurate. Since the government doesn't want to do this job it's up to us.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Not "Free Software" in the RMS sense, but still transparent source: you could simply publish the source under age-old copyright law. Just like a script to a movie. The author (or developer) still retains all rights to the script (the source), but the public gets to read it, and maybe even act it out with their friends at home (akin to compiling the source yourself for testing), but is forbidden from creating directly derived works or publishing their own movies from the script...
How about just splitting a state's electors along popular vote lines? In Presidential-2000 election 50% of Minnesota's 10 electors would have gone to Bush. (There are already a few (2?) states who do this).
And any state can chose to do this. If you want it in your state, ask for it. Or (if you have initiative in your state), file an initiative and start getting signatures.
However, the winner-take-all nature of most states' choice of electors is part of the original compromise that led to the electoral college.
With either popular-vote selection of the president or a proportional system of selecting voters, one populous state with a corrupt election system swings the election. Winner-take-all means corruption of one state can't override a narrow margin in a large set of small states.
Wiinner-take-all also sets up a situation where the presidential candidates must appeal to both the big AND the little states in order to collect enough electoral votes to win. With proportional voting it's more efficient to go for a big margin in a few large urban areas and ignore the flyover country.
And THAT LAST was why it was created: As a protection for the little states against being swamped by a couple big ones, in order to give them the confidence to sign on with the union in the first place. From the 1780s to today there have ALWAYS been a small number of heavily populated states and a large number of sparse ones. The president is a single officeholder for ALL the states, not just the urban ones. Make it a popular vote and he becomes the president of a few urban coastal cities, creating a political situation more like that of France.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I helped write the original eVACS system. Forking the code for a US voting system is a nice idea, but probably won't be as helpful as you might like. Most of the complexity in the eVACS code is dealing with the ACT's Hare-Clark electoral system. That affects both the voting interface and the back end counting system. It even affects the system's whole architecture, because the votes have to all be recorded, then counted as a batch, rather than tallied as they are entered which is the obvious way to count a first-past-the-post US style election.
So looking at the system might yield some good ideas about how to organise the system (in particular how the sequence of voting and authentication is handled), but I don't think all that much code could be reused.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Id always advocate an open source voting system. It seems that it ought to be imperitive that any electronic voting system can be audited publically to reveal any flaws or biases. However, it seems to me that either way even with an open source system how would one prove that the system used during the electing / voting process is the same as the one being available for public audit?
And how to acertain that those running the system did or did not bias or effect the results in some way?
Maybe electronic voting isnt such a good idea at all? Maybe the safer option is to stick with a paper based situation that cannot easily be fudged ? (that is not to say that a paper based system is also not open to fudging...)
Whatever way, and whatever flaws, the public should have unfettered access to every part of the process at least to the extent that nothing is hidden. Open source and closed source are just as open to abuse as is a paper based system. As much of it remains examinable the better in my opinion.
Nick...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
The fact that this switch from open to effectively closed voting software has occured in Australia might create an opportunity to get the issue out into the media.
Unlike most countries, voting is actually compulsory in Australia. If you don't vote in a federal or state election, and you don't have a good reason, you get fined. If you refuse to pay your fine, then you have to answer to a court. If you keep on refusing to accept some form of penalty, then eventually you get sent to jail.
If even a small number of people were to refuse to vote in an election, on the basis that they thought the election process was not transparent, and then subsequently wound up in jail, this would be bound to generate media interest. It would get the issue out in the open where the public could hear the issues involved and think about it. Who knows, maybe it could even attract international attention ?
Gosh. So the laws meant to prevent advocating a candidate or position now also apply to questioning the integrity of the process?
Why? If the Machines (your capital M) are honest and the people behind them have nothing to hide, there should be no objection to questioning the system. After all, I can talk about the weather inside the line, offer someone my business card, wear a shirt with the name of my favorite band or diety, or pretty much anything else, unless it could in someway be construed as an attempt to effect the outcome of the election.
If you think that questioning the integrity of the machines is an attempt to alter the outcome of the election, what you are saying is, in effect, the outcome of the election will somehow be different if we don't ask if the machines are honest.
This does not allay my fears.
-- MarkusQ
It's Australian Capital Territory (ACT) you insenstive clod!
--Murray Barton
Another one:
-- MarkusQ
Really? Are you saying that paper votes cannot be verified?
Well in Australia they are - and very accurately too.
The system is simple:
1. Each ballot handed out is initialled by an Electoral Officer *when* it is handed to the voter. A vote will not be counted without those initials.
2. Each voter gets one, and one only ballot. If they spoil the paper they can ask for another but they have to return the spoiled one.
3. A count is kept of the number of ballots handed out.
4. At the end of the election *all* ballot papers are gathered and accounted for:
If the discrepancy between those accounted for at the end and those handed out during the day is greater than the winning margin, a new election is held. In my experience the discrepancy is never very large (usually much less than 100 votes across 30,000 voter electorates)
5. The counting is then done by hand by Electoral Officers, watched by volunteers from the political parties (who may object to how a particular ballot is interpreted or counted).
End of story. Simple and effective.
Does this sound like a nationwide version of the Miami-Dade manual recount? Sound like a real nightmare? Must take ages!
Yes, no and definitely no.
Yes it *is* just like the Miami-Dade count.
No it isn't a nightmare. It is a simple and effective system that is very tightly audited and very well trusted by all participants in the politcal process.
No it doesn't take ages. In Australia, full nationwide elections (which involve 100% of citizens - we have compulsory voting) are usually decided within 3 hours of the close of the polls. Close results might take 4 hours.
Sorry about the AC -- a dingo ate my password.
- secure-are-the-indian-electronic-voting-machines.h tml
I hope I'm not the only one here (fat chance) who read the recent story on the Indian eVoting machines -- they had simple hardware (voting boxes that ran off of 9V batteries), a simple vote tallying box, the ability to support India's diverse population (low literacy, more 100 official languages, more than a billion people).
A poll basicly runs off of a 8 bit microcontroller, with the program burned into
ROM. It seems largely immune to everything other than out-and-out mass manufacture of counterfiet hardware, or showing up at the polls with firearms.
This url isn't the original URL that I remembered, but it's got similar background info: http://www.jivha.com/blog/archives/2004/04/27/how
Yes, I can see that point, but it relies on a very questionable assumption: Where in the heck does this come from? The fact is, I want people to vote, and want their vote to be counted. Because I'm worried that my country is having a fast one pulled on it, and (like many before me) I'm willing to put concern for my contry ahead of my personal comfort & safety.
What I can't figure out is why you are responding as you do. If you were really someone involved in the electorial process, and it was honest, I'd think you'd be telling me about all the wonderful things that have been done to make sure that my vote is counted, not telling me how harshly you'll deal with me if I persist in questioning it.
And that brings up another point: who are you that you can not only have me arested but be assured of a conviction and state what sentence I will be given? All of this first person ("I will have you arrested") stuff is a little off-putting. I can't figure out if you're the executive branch, or the judicial branch, or just some diety slumming on slashdot.
Or do you work for Diebold?
-- MarkusQ
I've read it.
I was merely pointing out that Microsoft's claims of the GPL being viral are quite false, this is an obvious counterexample.
Appearently the mods didn't get that though... oh well.
I touch computers in naughty places
Well it certainly isn't civil obedience now, is it?
Since the generally accepted meaning of the term "civil disobedience" is non-violent disobeying of a law or otherwise challenging civil authority as a means of protest, I'm not at all sure how you can be so definite that it's not civil disobedience, especially as you argue that it is illegal.
Are you claiming that it is violent?
Or not a form of protest?
How is, for example, throwing tea in a harbour or chaining yourself to a tree civil disobedience, while this is not?
-- MarkusQ
P.S. I just noticed this:
The "rest" of them? I'm not taking a stand "for or against" any "candidates and issues"; I'm not wanting one side to win so much as wanting the process to be fair and open. I'd much rather have "my side" lose a fair election than win a crooked one.Which may be why I'm so worried when people start getting angry at the thought of trying to make sure that the election isn't rigged. Both sides should want to make sure there isn't any funny stuff going on, I would think...rather than getting angry when ask how why know everyone's vote is counted, they should be trying to help answer the question.
If your doctor threatened to have you arested if you asked any other patients about side-effects of the medicine he was prescribing, would you just shug and swallow it?
tossing the King's tea into the harbor was a criminal act!!!!!!!!!
Interesting perspective... if only I could *mod* as an AC, I'd give you a bump just for being original...
Death to Argument by Slogan!! (This post twice-encrypted with ROT-13. Replies not using same will be ignored)
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.
Just to clarify, all the authors can go and place the work under another license, and stop distributing the GPL-licensed package. However, once I have a copy of the GPL package, nothing outside of a GPL violation can stop me from distributing it.
On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
As George Bush said in "Farenheit 9-11", "Access is Power". Whoever has access, has power.
... ?
We the
"the company now says that portions of eVACS's codebase will be released only to approved analysts, and in encrypted form, to enable viewing"
Jay! The analysts get to see the encrypted source!
Excerpt: "32894@#%%#@%@#%#@%#@R@R@F!RF@$RF@F@"
"Well, can't see any bugs in it.."
India was worthless with Gandhi agitating Indians, so the Brits left. No, we didn't, or not totally. India is still part of the Commonwealth. They wanted the right to make independent decisions, not to break with Britain totally.
"This is why men never share their feelings; because women always remember." -Just Shoot Me.
Umm hang on guys - if I read the article correctly, this software was released under the GPL. Yes/No? If that is the case, then it's GPL'd for good. The software developer just can't take their src code now, close it up and refuse to release the code. That's a breach of the GPL terms of agreement. And for that matter, if they close this software off and develop a totally NEW voting software, if it contains ANY traces of src code from this software then it too is in breach of the GPL.
Furthermore, this software was developed with funding by the Australian Electoral commission. Public money. I don't like a private individual taking my tax money and making something for the public and then trying to privatise it when it's not legal.
We need a large company (IBM Australia?) to take legal action in the courts to validate the GPL in this country NOW. It's happened in Germany and that sets a good solid precedant world wide. If we don't more software developers will take GPL'd code and do the same. Privatise. Not good. That combined with software patents in Europe and the US will pretty much kill OSS.
Dave
Slashdot can go and get fucked.
n/t
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"Not coincidentally, I'm still technically a subject of the Crown, not a citizen of a republic :)"
This is one of the things that gets me down sometimes. When the Roundheads under Cromwell executed Charles I, they turned England into something like a religious republic, and the people ultimately got so cheesed off with it that when Cromwell died his son (Richard?) decided to resign as Lord Protector and invite a new monarch to reign, rather than continue the experiment.
Perhaps it happened too soon; maybe 100 years later things could have been different. Or perhaps the English are used to submitting to rule by foreign families whose fitness to rule is given by a deity that I don't personally believe in.
The only downside to the French revolution was that today's French republic, now in its 5th incarnation, bestows riches on its President along with legal immunity during office (look at Jacques Chirac's "glorious" past - check out those scandals). Or am I just being cynical?
(and yes, I know Mitterand was just as bad)
Yet the President can still be voted out of office...
The problem is that the votes are not open.
If votes are closed transactions, it's closed to scrutiny.
What you need is a 'show of hands' kind of voting system.
This means that the electorate is able to perceive itself - a crucial aspect for demonstrating transparency.
So, ideally every voter publishes their vote - for all to see.
This means that anyone can count the votes.
1) Each time a vote is called for, a digital voting card/certificate is issued to all entitled registrants. This function is performed by open source software such that it is clear that the certificate is anonymised (no record is kept as to what recipient received which certificate). However, each one does have a serial number.
2) A voter then uses the certificate in conjunction with their own digital signature to create a specific vote. The resulting vote reveals its serial number and contains the vote selection, it also demonstrates that it could only have been produced in conjunction with a proper voting certificate and a proper (but untracable) digital signature. This enables the voter to assure themselves that it is their vote in the open ballot box and not an impostor's - and also that the vote is correct.
3) The votes may then be dropped in anonymously via any Cafe wifi access point, USB dongle, or even e-mail. These will be conveyed to the publicly hosted p2p/distributed system representing the national ballot box - which may be freely read by anyone.
It is a civil offense to claim ownership of a particular vote (anonymity should be compulsory).
It is up to each citizen to ensure that their vote has arrived in the ballot box.
4) The ability to read a vote's serial number is always possible. However, the vote itself is only visible with a decrypt code. This is published by the voting system at such time as it is decided that a count is permissible (will not greatly sway the minds of those who have yet to vote).
5) At some point the vote is closed - a count is fixed (in association with the serial numbers of votes that were available at the time of the count), and any subsequent votes are ignored.
no, not a typo, S stands for something else
p.s. yeah, transparency would be nice....but can we honestly expect it?
This is the definition I have of Occam's razor:
"Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred."
Extrapolating this to apply to solutions to problems, it says that out of two solutions that solve a problem equally well, you should pick the simpler one.
However, this amounts to more than just "don't make it more complicated than it needs to be". It's closer to "pick the simpler solution, as long as it works as well as (or better than) the complex one". While you have the "simple" part down, what Jerf and sholden are arguing with you about is the idea that such a solution as you espouse would actually work anywhere near as well as a more complicated one. Also, neither Jerf nor sholden said that "not implementing e-voting" was out of the question. They simply stated that, if e-voting were in fact implemented, easy-mode coding isn't going to cut it.
As far as I know the Austalian eVACS systems was not "open development"; it was developed internally by enterprises under contract and fragments of the system sources were released for the purposes of public scrutiny, and it is in this sense the source code was "open", i.e. it was publicly available. The vote collecting and vote counting system runs as a closed system, making potential security threats very difficult with just the knowledge of the code. Surely not making the code public can be seen as hedging ones bets against problems with the overall security model, e.g. the "trusted path": Is this a good thing? Should we be satisfied with a security model in which we need to hedge our bets and be forced to sacrifice transparency? By making code public it is far more likely that problems with the system would be found, as we did as part of an investigation into the formalisation of vote counting mechanisms: http://web.rsise.anu.edu.au/~rpg/EVoting/.
It is my opinion that government processes, especially the democratic process of voting, should be as accessible and transparent as possible. The proposed "controlled open source" system, though I am not completely familiar with it, appears as if it would hinder or exclude public access to a public process, and would deny independent attempts of testing or machine based verification.
a
I was thinking about that last time I voted here. I'd prefer to see two full voting days, one of them a weekend day, one a weekday, and a national law declaring, with no exceptions, that every employer MUST give each worker a minimum of one-half of one of those days off, PAID, from work, penalty free, so that the employee can vote.
I haven't thought this through any further than this yet. I thought of it as I listened to a reporter point out that the poorest in our society, the very people who often have "the biggest stake" in an election outcome, have the lowest voter turnout, historically. The poorer you are, the less you can afford to vote, because you not only need to keep your job, and make those hours you need to survive, but also you have an even harder time travelling to the polling place.
The current system of voting in America is biased towards salaried workers with cars, and those who are even more affluent, it seems to me, and that's fundamentally undemocratic.