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Linux Takes Over E-Voting In Australian State

Posted by kdawson on from the you-call-that-a-distro dept.

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?"

3 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. A couple of things by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:A couple of things by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  2. Still wrong by Yvanhoe · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 !

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.