Linux Takes Over E-Voting In Australian State

daria42 writes "The Electoral Commission in the Australian state of Victoria has made plans to expand its use of electronic voting kiosks based on Linux in the next state election in November of this year. But it appears to be a little confused: the documentation states it will be using the '2.6 kernel/Gentoo release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.' Huh?"

Comments

A couple of things

[MichaelSmith]

I live in Victoria and as far a I know there is only one electoral commission in Australia and that is the national one. Maybe the AEC is trialing something in Victoria?

Voting here has always been manual. You write a number in the box. I write it backwards. Gun nuts get the highest number, the greens get the lowest (which is 1), but I accept that other people go about it their own ways.

I have never seen a computer of any kind in a place where we vote. The process is obsessively manual and works very well.

Re:A couple of things

[GigaplexNZ]

As for odd letters, some political party programmer needs a course in logic. Just because my brother and sister live at the same address and share a last name, they are not Mr and Mrs.

Had you replaced WA with Tasmania, I would have disagreed with you right there.

Still wrong

[Yvanhoe]

Linux doesn't make electronic voting a good idea though. How can we check the published program is the one running ? It is akin to use opaque voting boxes without showing they are empty first.

Spread the word to fellow voters : if YOU can't understand how the vote is secured, refuse the voting system !

Re:Still wrong

[Mornedhel]

here (France) any citizen is welcome to participate or oversee the public counting of ballots. We use transparent ballot boxes so you are free to stay in the voting office from the opening to the counting. There are always several people there including opponents.

I can attest to that. Every time I go to vote I'm asked if I would like to help with the counting, despite the fact that I don't vote for the usual majority in my arrondissement, and that the old guy asking me does. I usually can't help, though, because of other time constraints.

I also personally know several people who regularly help with the counting. Some of them are involved in their local politics, and some of them aren't.

So basically, every time we get the election results, I am highly confident that they do in fact represent the wish of the majority of my fellow citizens. They usually elect the wrong guy.