OSS Election Systems Desired, but Not Ready

An anonymous reader writes "Even though many American voters are ready for open source systems at the polls, Newsforge (a Slashdot sister site) has an interesting story about why open source may not be ready for the polls. From the article: 'The only open source e-voting effort that Rubin [an e-voting expert] noted was the Open Voting Consortium (OVC). "I don't agree with everything they are doing, but they are all about transparency and open source," Rubin said. OVC President and CEO Alan Dechert says it would take a large investment of time and money to provide an alternative to traditional e-voting systems vendors, but he says an effort known as Open Voting Solutions (OVS) is looking to do just that.'"

Comments

OSS ready for the polls

[kc0re]

You know, I am an OSS guy as much as most of the people on Slashdot. I would love all software to be free, but then companies wouldn't make any money.

But if closed source polls can't get it right, what makes us think that OSS polls can? Again, I'm a big OSS advocate, and I would love to see OSS in the role for everything under the sun.
I don't think the public would know, however, if people were using OSS polls or a closed source poll. Nor do I think they would care...

but I would be willing to be that they would be more secure than their closed counterparts
I know i have read somewhere of someone hacking a voting machine..

But it all falls back on the basis of all software problems. The (software|hardware) is only as smart as the person operating it.

Get some decent candidates

[RedHatLinux]

before you worry about how the votes are counted. Seriously, given that most candidates are basically carbon copies of each other, with only token differences, there no real motivation to vote.

I've voted in every election held since I turned 18,but the only reason I do that is avoid hearing "If you didn't vote, you can't complain", which is an assinine theory, given I pay taxes and served in the military, but hey, it's always funny when I get asked why I was flipping a coin while voting.

Re:Paper Ballots?

[NoTheory]

That's a bunk argument. So many states rights issues have been overruled by the federal court system. And, specifically, there have also been noises made about mandating a federal standard for federal elections. I'm quite sure that principle is not going to win out in this sort of discussion, as in many others.

Re:Paper Ballots?

[Zeinfeld]

Out of curiousity, how many people do you have staffing any given election/vote count?

I don't recall, 30 or so per constituency but it certainly varies.

The main thing about paper ballots is that there is no variation in the ballot access by precinct. There is no way to pull the type of corruption the GOP pulled in Ohio, Ken Blackwell deliberately underequiping the polling booths in student areas so that there were people waiting to vote at 2am. There is no way to pull the type of corruption that Katherine 'faceache' Harris pulled in Florida where the optical scanning machines had different programming acording to whether the precinct was white or black. In the white precincts the machines sounded an alarm if the ballot misread and the voter got another chance. In the black precincts the machines just silently accepted the paper without making any response.

The way that elections are really stolen is to suppress turnout. Harris had an operation that was 'purging' the electoral rolls of people who had the same names and skin color as convicted fellons. The contract was awarded no bid to a crony.

Clean elections should not be a party issue. It looks to me as if the GOP is about to get burned really bad. There are 15 or so members of Congress likely to be taken out by various scandals, only one of which is a Democrat (from Louisiana natch.). Those 15 are all from the same districts at the center of the election fraud disputes and involve many of the same people. Harris is about to drop out of the Senate race in Florida now that it is clear she lied in her response to the Wade scandal. In Ohio the wife of Noe, the guy at the center of the 'coingate' scam was at the center of the election fix.

The type of people who fix elections are the type of people who take bribes and kickbacks in office. As a result of the sleaze scandals during the Major government Tony Blair has just celebrated his third election victory without even the hint of a challenge from the Conservative party. The same could easily happen in the US, even a polarized electorate can tip very heavily.