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John Edwards on Open Source Voting Machines

Posted by Zonk on from the let's-get-an-interview-set-up dept.

goombah99 writes "John Edwards, the presidential candidate and lawyer, is standing out from the pack by showing himself to be a bit tech savvy. In 2003 he was a guest host on Lawrence Lessig's Blog, giving his view on the imbalance between property right protection and the good of public access. As of this week he has become the first presidential candidate to support 'open source code' for election systems in addition to voter verified paper records. He's even personally using Twitter. 'Currently, software used in election systems remains the proprietary property of vendors. This situation has created a continual problem when anomalous results have been reported and independent experts are denied the ability to review how the systems work. A growing body of critics oppose this privatization of the voting system.'"

5 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Support AB 852 by mhale_85 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I work for Paul Krekorian and I hope that all Californians here will call their state legislators and ask them to support AB 852, the Secure, Accurate, Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, a bill that would require disclosed source code for all election systems. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_n umber=ab_852&sess=CUR&house=B&author=krekorian The bill is currently in Assembly Appropriations Committee and won't move until January, but it's a very important piece of legislation that we hope will reach the governors desk and receive the governor's signature.

  2. Canada leads the way. by Goalie_Ca · · Score: 1, Informative

    How open source is it in canada? It is as open as it can ever get. It is done on paper. You get a pen and a piece of paper with a list of all the candidates from all the major parties and then some. It is all counted before the turn of the day and recounts are done within another. We've never had a problem.

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  3. Re:Fragmenting the vote by TodMinuit · · Score: 2, Informative

    You know geeks could be a powerful voting block, if they could organize and officially support a single candidate. Impossible. Have you ever seen an IRC flamewar? Imagine that, but magnified.
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    I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
  4. Re:Fragmenting the vote by catbutt · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, organizing to avoid fragmenting is what causes partisanship. Duvergers law.

    Condorcet and/or approval voting solves this problem, but until we have that, we're stuck with partisanship and all the screwiness of plurality elections.

  5. Article in one sentence by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 3, Informative

    the Edwards campaign stated that, "To ensure security, these machines should be programmed with an open source code for complete transparency, and election results should be safeguarded by voter-verified paper records."

    I know RTFA is uncalled for, or even RTFS, but maybe if I put this quote in the comments section I can head off the "It needs a paper-trail *snort*" comments. Already, those seem to make up 35% of the comments. Ron Paul comments seem to come in second at 25%, and comparisons to Canada and bad jokes seem tied at about 10-15% each.

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