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CA Sec. of State Panel on Open Source Elections
goombah99 writes "The Open Voting Consortium has announced that California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is forming a panel to investigate using open source software in elections. Suggested Panel members include Security expert Bruce Perens and Python guru David Mertz who is associated with the sourceforge EVM2003 voting machine project. This is big since a favorable outcome could help fund prototypes of true open source election equipment and systems."
Just ask yourself the following: "Who has more money to pay lobbyists -- Diebold or the Open Source Movement?"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This is very important in terms of keeping what's left of our democracy alive.
The number of abuses possible using Diebold's is simply staggering...
I'm impressed with a lot of the people campaigning against slimy voting machines - one is http://blackboxvoting.org/; there are people who have been devoting their lives to this since the last election... More then I'm good for!
Open Source voting machines will make it much easier for potential problems to be spotted, and a hell of a lot easier to get them fixed! The current companies don't really need to worry about fixing their problems - after all, what's wrong with fixing elections?
--LWM
I don't hold out much hope, especially since this is California - the land of the Guvernator. On the other hand, it is also the hotbed of the open source movement. So, there might be some hope.
What we really need is a tremendous scandal in an election: something like all votes are lost and Ross Perot gets elected to the school board, or something. Only then will people actually wake up and realize that they vote is easily in jeopardy from proprietary and unresponsive (and partisan, I might add) election powerhouses like Diebold.
let the flamebait mod down begin...
safe by design-- i.e., based on paper
Yes, because everybody knows that paper is a write-once, ready many system with built-in user authentication which cannot be hidden, destroyed, or otherwise tampered with.
terminals which print out an ink ballot
That's part of the push for open source voting systems - you have a hard copy for verification. There are much better ways than just having it print out who you voted for so that you can drop it in a box - for example, one method which I read about not only keeps a paper record (which the user never has to handle, but is there for recounts), but prints out a tracking number that the user can enter on the election board's website and verify that their vote is in the system and who it is listed as being for.
... in Siberia, where Putin killed a fish with a speargun. He later claimed it was killed by Ukrainian separatists.
A receipt, whether a plain-text record or a number you can use over the phone or the internet, makes coercion so easy as to be laughable. What happens when your employer support some particular ballot measure, sees it fail at the ballot box, and then has an off-the-record policy where you show your receipt to the right people, and if it that says you voted for the measure, it will be in your favour the next time layoffs come around? What about a union shop that wants to make sure people voted, and voted for the "right" people? How about the police department wondering who supported the tax increase to pay for more police officers?
Sadly, because there are so many ways to abuse a verification mechanism, I have to conclude that a secret ballot must be kept absolutely secret, even from the voter himself once he drops it in the ballot box. And that's why I still favour pencil and paper, or punched cards. At least there's something tangible to go back and recount.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
I think they need to concentrate not on a system that's open-source, but on a system where you don't need to trust the hardware to be able to verify the results. Open-source would be nice, but IMHO the critical requirement is more that you should be able to determine whether the reported results are correct without having to put unconditional trust in any one part of the system.
Eg., a system where the terminal records your vote electronically, then produces a printed ballot with both human-readable and barcode on it. The barcodes can be scanned quickly, so it's possible to compare the electronic results to the printed ballots. A template of the barcode for each possible value can be used to let humans quickly determine whether the barcodes match the human-readable name. And the voter can verify before putting his printed ballot in the box that the human-readable names on his ballot match the way he voted. Securing the physical ballots is similarly amenable to methods that insure that it'd take an improbable conspiracy to actually succeed in tampering with them.
The dream might have been true once, but not anymore. Today it's an illusion, a type of propaganda, to accept the status quo: That the very rich becomes ever more rich at the expense of the rest. Many have two jobs, but can't really makes end meets. They work hard, but they will never strike it rich. No Western country has such an uneven distribution of wealth and capital, and is so rich at the same time. But still the poor is left to fend for themselves as best as they can as recent events so tragically shows.
No, I'm sorry, but that's not sufficient.
The compiler (which is executed as a binary) itself could be subverted.
The compiler can take the good friendly Open Source, compile like normal (for the most part,) but then inject some nastiness wherever it was programmed to.
Even observing the compilation of the compiler does not help, because someone can subvert the compiler that compiles the compiler.
What I recommend: Humans performing pencil & paper counting under scrutiny of video camera and representatives of competing parties. Distribute the video tapes of the counting process on the Internet, and maintain archives for at least 12 years.
If you are looking for the Open Voting Consortium website, it may be found at http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/.
The basic idea that the OVC promotes is that of a computer-assisted voting station (or stations, to accomodate different kinds of voters who have physical impairments) that produces a paper ballot that *is* the official ballot and that can be read by both humans and computers.
This goes one step beyond verified voting. Verified voting has paper records that serve as audit trails but that are not themselves the official ballots. The OVC system goes one step further and makes the paper that the voter sees and approves the actual ballot.
There are a lot of complexities in voting systems; the OVC system avoids many of these difficulties because it is really a conservative application of computers to traditional methods.
In addition, the OVC system, because it produces a paper ballot, can have many different kinds of voting stations to accomodate the different physical needs of different voters.
The OVC wants voting software to be, at a minimum, open to inspection and testing by anyone.
Personally, I can conceive of some people who might come up with clever user interface mechanisms to help voters deal with ballots - and I personally don't think that those mechanism need to be part of the open voting systems. However, the core aspects of creating, handling, and counting ballots should not be wrapped in inpenetrable proprietary shrouds - every voter must know for a fact that his/her vote has been correctly recorded and correctly counted.
By-the-way - full disclosure time - I'm on the Board of Directors of the OVC.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Better yet, just change the Wikipedia version and claim victory!
Its not clear what point you are making here.
- Is it they do other critical transactions so they must be good at it.
- Or is it that their ATM machines might be bad too.
If its the later, ATM machines are completely different problem from voting machines.
ATM machines have to have printers and provide a receipt at least as an option. Most of Diebold's machines have no printer and no option to get a receipt.
If Diebold's ATM machines start doing wrong transactions it would become immediately apparent to the bank and any customer who has a bookkeeping system.
ATM machines and bank transactions don't have to maintain anonymity of the user, voting systems do. It really complicates validation of the transaction.
A paper receipt, verifiable by the voter, deposited in a lock box and subjet to very random recounts would solve most of the uncertainty in electronic voting.
All in all open source would be better than closed source for electronic voting machines but it would provide zero certainty that the election still isn't being rigged electronically. The only two good ways to insure good elections are:
- paper ballets marked with a pencil, watch and counted like a hawk by multiple adverserial observers which works great in just about every country but America.
- if you have to do evoting, you have to have a printer, and a human verifiable receipt going in to a lockbox and hand recounted by adverserial.
@de_machina