Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Voting Software Concept Released
filesiteguy writes "Wired is reporting that the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation has announced the first release of Linux- and Ruby-based election management software. This software should compete in the same realm as Election Systems & Software, as well as Diebold/Premiere for use by County registrars. Mitch Kapor — founder of Lotus 1-2-3 — and Dean Logan, Registrar for Los Angeles County, and Debra Bowen, California Secretary of State, all took part in a formal announcement ceremony. The OSDV is working with multiple jurisdictions, activists, developers and other organizations to bring together 'the best and brightest in technology and policy' to create 'guidelines and specifications for high assurance digital voting services.' The announcement was made as part of the OSDV Trust the Vote project, where open source tools are to be used to create a certifiable and sustainable open source voting system."
That's pretty cool.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Once again, programmers thinking software will change the world.
Elections are not based on trust of software, it is based on trust of the PROCESS.
This is completely true, but having voting machine software that the public can trust is a part of that. I can't trust the process if the software makes it easy to cheat and hide it, or if there's no way for the public to verify that the voting machines do what they're supposed to.
Wouldn't it be better to have the accountability of paper ballots with all of the benefits of electronic voting (ease, accuracy, instant results, results can be uploaded and publicly accessed, etc.)? We can engineer that, and this is a good first step.