US Elections Dominated By Closed Source. Again.

An anonymous reader writes "Another American election is almost here, and while electronic voting is commonplace, it is still overwhelmingly run by closed source, proprietary systems. It has been shown that many of these systems can be compromised (and because they are closed, there may be holes we simply cannot know about). Plus they are vulnerable to software bugs and are often based on unstable, closed-source operating systems. By the inherent nature of closed software, when systems are (optionally!) certified by registrars, there is no proof that they will behave the same on election day as in tests. The opportunities for fraud, tampering and malfunction are rampant. But nonetheless, there is very little political will for open source voting, let alone simple measures like end-to-end auditable voting systems or more radical approaches like open source governance. Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available?"

Comments

Obligatory Daley

[DevConcepts]

Vote Early. Vote Often
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/classes/hmc.cs070.200401/votequote.html

Re:Obligatory Daley

[interkin3tic]

Who needs voter fraud, when you can have Voter [youtube.com] Intimidation [youtube.com]?

Since both of those links were to youtube videos of the same incident, one could conclude that one would want voter fraud because voter intimidation is not a significant factor nationwide.

Seriously, I can see how two black panthers outside one voting place in Philadelphia would be intimidating to voters, and since this would be the left, two guys in one location would be about the most organized voter intimidation conspiracy we could come up with, but you have to be badly deluded to equate the black panthers with the Democrats. That would be like equating the KKK voter intimidation with Republicans.

Because...

[twilightzero]

Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available? ...there's lots of money and power behind closed source, which leads to corruption and back-room deals. QED.

Re:Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

And open source company are really bad at lobbying.

Re:Because...

[spidercoz]

Exactly. Democracy in this country was bought and sold a long time ago, along with most of our other rights. But considering how little anybody gives a shit, it's no less than we deserve.

Re:Because...

[icebike]

Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available? ...there's lots of money and power behind closed source, which leads to corruption and back-room deals. QED.

And so far, no believable evidence that any errors actually changed the outcome of any election other than in those cases where it was so close that even human error could tip the balance. That's why mandatory recount rules kick in, in most states when races are very tight.

At least with the paper ballot reader systems you have the actual documents to count, and could count them on by hand or by an Open Source device after an election to prove or disprove any claims of errors.

But until that happens, even on a small scale, and demonstrates that the closed source systems delivered the wrong result there is just no motivation to do anything.

Of course the totally electronic voting systems, with NO physical record remains pretty much un-audit-able.

Re:Because...

[jra]

"The love of money" is the root of all evil.

Getting that particular quote right matters.

Re:Because...

[Jawnn]

(Personally I'm just as worried about eligibility - it was shown positively that enough felons voted in this election to tip the scales to Franken, but once an election is certified - even if verifiable fraud happened - there's no way to change anything.)

No, you are not. You are worried about having someone whom you don't favor elected to office. All you've done is bitch about unverifiable "facts" that you believe tipped the election in Franken's favor. If it had gone the other way, you'd have insisted that the system worked "just fine". Conspicuously absent from your post, is any meaningful demand for a system that would eliminate at least some of the opportunities for fraud. Every citizen should be screaming for that. That they (the citizens) are not is depressing, but that our elected officials, on both sides of the aisle, are not should be yet another indicator that the those representatives no longer give a flying fuck about the electorate beyond what they need to gain/retain their office, the interests of the electorate having long since taken a back seat to a wealthy and powerful few monied interests. Put all that together with the fact that elections are now being bought with an unlimited flow of dollars from multinational interests (thanks for that, SCOTUS) and the notion of any kind of democratic control is laughable.

Re:Because...

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Not only that, but people seem not to realize that the whole concept of "democracy" is these days merely a marketing gimmick.

As long as the ignorant masses have an illusion of participation and influence on the government, everything is "fine".

So it does not really matter if the new "voting" systems are auditable, error-proof or if they are even functional at all. As long as the spectacle of "voting" is staged with all the appropriate lip service, posturing and grand proclamations, then the machines fulfill their requirements. In fact electronic voting machines do better in this than the traditional ones because of all the blinking screens, fancy graphics, the general air of "high tech" to the uninitiated (which means 90%+ of "voters"). They allow for the show to go on with the bonus theme of "progress" while stuffing pockets of various corporate cronies of the politicians along the way.

As for the "votes" themselves, nothing would appreciably change if the machines did not even bother counting them and replaced them with random noise as most candidates of all political parties these days are already pre-approved by the true rulers of the so-called Western Democracies, i.e. the aristocratic insiders who control all the traditional mass media and the central structures of all major parties.

No outright ballot-box stuffing, electronic edition, is needed. It simply does not matter anymore as the system is rigged far past the point of the need for such crude methods.

And this is the true reason why there is no interest in making sure the voting process actually works. Open source is only a tangent in this, because even without Open Source, other means of insuring validity of the votes exist, such as various paper trails etc. But they are simply deemed irrelevant by those who know that the voting and its outcomes are really meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Hence their different priorities and general disdain for any attempts to introduce any sort of "accountability" by well-meaning but horribly out of touch true believers in "democracy".

Because Nobody Cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody cares whether voting machines are open or closed source. In theory yeah, there may be potential exploits, but there are much easier and more obvious ways to detect fraud and tampering than looking through the source code.

Get over it people. Open source isn't a magical cure-all for anything. Hasn't the failure of widespread Linux adoption vs. Windows proven that?

Re:Because Nobody Cares

[mark72005]

The failure of Linux on the desktop is not due to the viability of the platform itself.

It's due to the militant ideology that keeps content and functionality that people expect, and that work, out of the distributions.

Computers are all content and experience. Linux has a decent experience but little content. Windows has content but a generally poor experience. Neither has solved all the problems.

Insiders

[schmidt349]

Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages

Because those in power don't want transparency to be a two-way street. They want to be able to peek into every aspect of our private lives, ostensibly to seek out some tiniest sliver of evidence that we maybe once upon a time didn't think it was necessarily all that great an idea to disembowel Osama bin Laden and stuff him with pork sausage on live TV. But they don't want us to be able to peek into their private lives, or even the seedier aspects of their public ones, so they take any opportunity to shut us out. The closed-source voting machines are just one facet of a much larger situation.

A great example of the way public officials form a "blue [pinstriped] wall" has just come up in the news again, Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas. A right-wing bloc in the all-male Senate of the day tore into every minor aspect of Hill's own sex life to try to discredit her in the eyes of the American public. They protected Thomas partly because he was a Republican but mostly because they knew how they would feel if their own mistresses (or male lovers, for that matter) came to Capitol Hill and aired out their dirty laundry, and how they would want the Congress to deal with those situations.

Because:

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available?

Because. We are still in the dark ages. We are still ruled by the same tyrants as back then.

Democracy is just an evolved form of Feudalism.

It is a way of enslaving people, yet convoluting and making non-obvious that fact, thus leading the people to believe they are free. It also protects the tyrants from beheading by the people, as the people can not easily figure out who the true rulers are.

Any transparency would be the opposite of them having absolute power and possibly expose the fraud of democracy.

Re:Because:

[Errol backfiring]

Corporatocracy is just an evolved form of Feudalism.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Common misconception

[Pojut]

I know, right? I had to argue with the company I work for FOREVER to let me use Audacity at work.

IT guy in charge: "It's open source, anyone could look at it and exploit it!"
Me: "Or, since you seem to know everything, you could look at it and see if it's exploitable."

Because that's the way they like it

[Agent0013]

"Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available?"

Because it would take a politician to change the law. But both parties like the broken system we have now because they each want to game the system for their own advantage. Fair and accurate voting doesn't help the political parties or the candidates, it only help the voters!

Don't Forget Paper Trails

[joebok]

There are generally 2 main points that electronic voting needs - coding available for public scrutiny is one, but in my mind a more important one is a paper audit trail - the vote is recorded electronically, but the voter gets to see a paper record of their vote (they either see but can't touch or carry it to a ballot box) which can be used later for recounts and verification.

I'd rather have a proprietary system with a paper trail than an open system with no paper trail. But really we need to insist, at a minimum, on both.

I'll tell you why we remain in the dark ages...

[g0bshiTe]

Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available?"

The reason is simple. Our government would not be able to fix elections if it were more transparent or had adequate auditing.

Re:Common misconception

[jra]

> However, I would actually consider the inability to have a recount a positive. It saves money for the taxpayer and reduces confusion and legal challenges after the election.

You sound like Tampa mayor Pam Iorio, who actually said that in public, and still got elected.

Would you both please go jump off a bridge, now?

Everyone else, repeat after me:

A VOTE IS A PHYSICAL OBJECT.

That's your mantra; use it well.

Re:Alternatives?

[Mongoose Disciple]

With the amount of money states/countries have spent renting/licensing these solutions. One of them, or a collection of them could have contracted the work for hire, and stipulated they receive the source code.

Probably, but that's not really the way local government works. Custom software development tends to be reserved for things for which there can be no shrink-wrapped-ish universal solution, usually because that city/county/etc. has unique laws that make the more established solution somehow incompatible with how they have to do things.

The most effective way to get people to do the right thing is to make it easy for them to do the right thing.

In other words

[houghi]

A comparison between Vegas slot machines and Electronic voting:
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/03/16/GR2006031600213.gif

Slashdot: Post early, Post often

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a little amazing to see the number of replies to this article already, and how many of them ignore the links in the original article.

1. It links to open source voting systems.
2. It links to a better way to audit voting systems
3. It links to open source governance, a way to overcome all the corruption and suppression by politicians (this kicks ass, btw)

Click these links. Read. learn. Then post.
(But of course, you will be the 379th post, so everybody will ignore it.)

Re:Because...it is the "Love of..."

[PB8]

i.e. lust for money and sex which is the root of evil. Don't objectify what is within us as deep character flaws and propensities. Jealousy, greed, lust, (and the other 4 vices) can have violent expression, especially when the perpetrator perceives a difference in power and has a reason to believe any act committed would not be easily found out.

All I want is a trustworthy election system that has auditable controls, manual and automated methods of recount, verifiable by the public, and with strict rules for what to do when results are alledged to be suspect. Accountability, transparency of process, and enforcement of applicable laws where criminal action is found is key, regardless of system adopted.

Okay, and one more thing (starting my more opinionated seque).

I want the option to always be able to vote:

E) NONE OF THE ABOVE

If a majority were able to vote NONE OF THE ABOVE, then we the people could have the power to veto the current slate of candidates and force a new election with new candidates. If we don't want to live in a nation governed by the latte white whine party (best populism corporations can buy) or tea party revolutionary pity potty funded by billionaires (Koch bros.) and CEOs, we need to the power to say NO more effectively than any Republican representative in Congress.

Why couldn't we reject all the evil or suspect candidates instead of just the voting for whomever or whatever we hope is the least evil option? The election rules we have now (that 2.1 party system along with with the referendums ginned up by astroturfing corporations) which seems to ensure evil continues in some form or another. What sort of nation will we end up with when elections come down to which candidate sucks less than the other? Any 'third party' candidate is now typically funded deviously by one of the other parties, with the cynical intent to sap votes from one of a passionate subset of the chief opponent's party when it is believed that the margin for election will be close. (This has happened in Ohio and Florida in the last couple of elections.)

Bonus rhetorical arguments (understand there may be a high snark content):

A related problem is how political campaigns are running now versus prior to 1960's. We used to read speeches and transcripts of debates, position & policy papers, etc. and we'd go to "whistle stops" to see and hear a candidate speak in person, and the campaign season was a few months, not 18 months to 4 years. Now we watch TV, listen to radio, read blogs, maybe read a Sunday paper, perhaps some of us try to emulate and argue like some talk show host, while billions are spent on attack ads (TV, radio, web, and newspapers) and specifically designed to elicit fear and loathing in a demoralizing manner, instead of utilizing more honest debate, compare and contrast, logical reasoning regarding benefits and costs and social morals, etc. Each October, we now must endure the unreal Candidate Horror Show each October, with a guaranteed slimey, fear and hate-inducing October Surprise!

Even our flag-waving patriotic US Chamber of Commerce (where Greed is sacred, ordained by God, and globally necessity ) feels there's nothing to question as it funds many of these foul ads using money, not just from big businesses wanting the status quo, but those wishing to encourage outsourcing, outsourcing companies in India, ever eager to take more of our jobs. Our US CoC has ongoing seminars to encourage corporations to do just that while waving the flag, at least for shareholders. How long until Indian and the other workers benefiting from outsourcing by US corporations demand some representation in our electoral college and Congress? Sure, India's CEO's have some big powerful lobbyists and legal firms working hard for them along with CoC, generating enabling legislation and buying the Congressional votes to pass it, but it's not quite the same as being from the proud state of Montana and casting the state's handful of votes in the name of it's citiz