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California Sec. of State Wants Open Source E-Voting Systems

Posted by Soulskill on from the nowhere-to-go-but-up dept.

Lucas123 writes "California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, was among a group of e-voting experts at MIT yesterday who said the nation's electronic voting systems are still not secure and many run on faulty software. Among the suggestions offered to fix the problem: use open source software, stop delivering e-voting machines to polling places weeks in advance of an election, and keep a paper trail for auditing purposes. Bowen also believes that a ubiquitous Internet voting system could not work without the use of a national ID card system."

3 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Simple Solution. by bigtallmofo · · Score: 5, Funny

    No need to open source anything or make any other changes... Just slap a sticker with one of those disclaimers on each of the current voting machines that reads "This is not a scientific poll and is completely inaccurate."

    Problem solved.

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
  2. Another trick: reduce the time pressure issue by compumike · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lots of the problems described occur because a voter must actually punch a bunch of buttons in just a few minutes -- matching a (hopefully predetermined) set of things they wanted to vote for. It seems like there's lots of room for error because of the time crunch that everyone feels in this situation.

    What if you could actually do the ballot on your computer at home, carefully making sure that the buttons you push are what you intended, and then bring a printout with something like a barcode or other digital encoding of your selections? (This wouldn't have to be tied to your name -- that can still happen in the booth.) Then you bring that barcode to the booth, and it scans it after you walk in, and that "preloads" your selections. Then, you're just down to a verify step, under less pressure.

    Seems to even open a new market for various parties to distribute the barcodes of their respective positions... :-/ don't want to make things *that* easy.

    Just a thought...

    --
    Learn electronics! Microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

  3. Re:Now for the BIG decision by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, the year of the Linux voting machine has arrived!

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.