Wisconsin Requires Open Source, Verifiable Voting

AdamBLang writes "Previously covered on Slashdot, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle today signed legislation that "will require the software of touch-screen voting machines used in elections to be open-source. Municipalities that use electronic voting machines are responsible for providing to the public, on request, the code used." Madison's Capital Times reports "the bill requires that if a municipality uses an electronic voting system that consists of a voting machine, the machine must generate a complete paper ballot showing all votes cast by each elector that is visually verifiable by the elector before he or she leaves the machine.""

Comments

This is amazing

[TubeSteak]

Municipalities that use electronic voting machines are responsible for providing to the public, on request, the code used.

This isn't like North Carolina requiring that the source be placed in escrow, they're actually requiring it be available to the public.

I can't wait to see what http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ has to say about this one.

It means they won't have to jump through fucking hoops just to test the machine (like in California)

Re:ABOUT GODDAMN TIME!

[General Fault]

Nor should a voting system require a multi-function operating system like windows nt. Really, do we need something with more power than nasa had 10 years ago just for the ++ op of voting? See the solution that India came up with. Cheap, simple, verifiable and easy to copy. Honestly, how many Mhz do you need to count a vote and how many MB do you need to store a tally?

Re:KISS

[hackstraw]

Being open source makes it tamper-resistent, not tamper-proof.

Somebody, probably not me or you will compile the final code to be run on some computer that we don't know the details of anyway. That somebody may know how to alter the code, maybe not.

I know of no way that a computer recount could happen without a paper trail.

Would it not be easier to just use a paper ballot in the first place?

I don't see how this is so difficult. Each voting place I've been to scratches off your name when you show up to vote off of a roster of registered voters, and there should be a total count of those registered which should equal the number of pieces of paper in the ballot box.

There can be simple large scantron type cards that are immediately sorted into something like X party, Y party and Z party, and maybe "other". These can be quickly gone though and if there was an X in the Y party box, something might be fishy. If the Z party box weighs more than the X party box which has more than Y, then Z won. It could counted if mass is that big of a controversy.

In this country, people have the right to anonymously vote for a particular candidate, but not to vote anonymously. It is known when you vote, and for good reason so that dead people don't go around voting over and over again or even live people.

What is so difficult with counting nominal data these days?

Not really Open Source

[hweimer]

From TFB:

5.91 (19) The coding for the software that is used to operate the system on election day and to tally the votes cast is publicly accessible and may be used to independently verify the accuracy and reliability of the operating and tallying procedures to be employed at any election.

This is somewhat less than what is usually meant by the term "Open Source". But it seems that at least voting machines running a completely closed operating systems are ruled out.

Re:KISS

[j. andrew rogers]

Something similar is done in Nevada, which is generally regarded as being clueful about preventing fraud in electronic machines thanks to many years of dealing with elaborate attempts at electronic gambling machine fraud. Much of the value of electronic voting machines are that they are inexpensive, fast, and theoretically less error-prone to manage compared to pre-printed paper ballots and other older methods.

While no voting system is fool-proof, the Nevada method is something like this: Electronic voting with a voter-verified paper receipt to ensure that what is on the paper is what was selected electronically by voter. The paper receipts are collected and a few percent of the total paper records are randomly and independently audited to verify the electronic records. The important thing that happens here is that the verification and authentication of the vote is distributed among multiple authorities, providing strong statistical evidence that an election was indeed counted as it was voted while providing no single point of failure or manipulation that is likely to go unnoticed. It also does not have the overhead of manually counting every single paper ballot.

This is actually a more robust voting protocol in many ways than the paper ballots it replaces. I do not know if Wisconsin is doing things precisely this way, but I imagine that they would use some variation of the Nevada protocol.

BIG PROBLEM

[goombah99]

The problem here is that there are no open source voting machines on the market at this time. So what is going to happen?
In most cases they can't be since the OS is closed source. Moreover, federal certification is no longer just for stand alone voting machines but requires the whole "system" of vote counting and vote merging software to be certified. So even when the vote counters could be open source the vote databases may not be. Diebolds run on windows CE, ES&S ivotronics probably run on windows CE, ES&S opscans run on Qnix, sequoia touchscreen kiosks run on some undisclosed proprietary software and the ballot database software runs on windows. No word what Sequoia Optek/insights run on but again the ballot data bases run on windows.

thus these companies can't open their source since it's not theirs to open.

Accupol is built on linux and java so it could in principle be open source at their discretion. But because the accupols are cobbled together from mainly commodity components the company investors is averse to open sourcing their only real IP.

Not sure about avante and harte and unilect but it appears they contain windows software.

OVC is the only system truly designed with open source in mind. But it's not ready for sale yet.

This is the one state...

[dimension6]

...whose senator actually voted against the Patriot Act.

Re:KISS

[mrhartwig]

From what I understand, the hanging chads were most likely the result of voter fraud by the election officials in charge.

Bullshit. While I happen to suspect that there was some fraud in the 2000 election (in Florida along with a bunch of other places) this sounds like nothing more than a Conspiracy Theory, knee-jerk, reaction.

We use the same ballot system here in my little corner of Missouri, and I assure you that it's very possible to leave a chad hanging, even with the "approved" punch device that's part of the voting station. No icepick required.

If you did use an icepick in the manner described in the parent, you couldn't do very many cards at once; there would be quite obvious damage around the hole, as the icepick would be significantly bigger than the chad hole. And the wrong shape (round vs. rectangular).

I don't remember if I'm making this up, but I believe our instructions include a step having you check to make sure all the chads have been totally punched out. If we do have such an instruction, I don't know if it was there before 2000. But I've always checked, instruction or not; it's not that complicated. :-)

Also to add an on-topic comment; Wisconsin's law is a great step, but I agree with other posters that a much better system would be to make the vote generation device separately from the vote counting device.