Open Source Voting Software Concept Released

Posted by Soulskill on Friday October 23, 2009 @02:01PM from the one-for-you-and-two-for-me dept.

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."

1 of 121 comments (clear)

OK, why Linux, why Ruby? by r7 · 2009-10-23 14:37 · Score: 1, Troll

Curious about the choice of OS, given that Linux security, especially the kernel, is known to be inferior to BSD, OpenBSD in particular. Also curious about the choice of programming language, Ruby, when Python is known to be more readable, and more easily audited. Shouldn't the most important feature of a voting system, aside from useability and accesibility, be its auditability? Why would anyone choose a system that is known to be less auditable and less secure?