Australian Electoral Commission Refuses To Release Vote Counting Source Code

angry tapir writes: The Australian Electoral Commission has been fighting a freedom of information request to reveal the source code of the software it uses to calculate votes in elections for Australia's upper house of parliament. Not only has the AEC refused an FOI request (PDF) for the source code, but it has also refused an order from the Senate directing that the source code be produced. Apparently releasing the code could "leave the voting system open to hacking or manipulation."

Comments

Re:This is complete crap!!!

[Mjec]

What's probably happening is that some "IT" company whose only client is the government/AEC probably makes a fairly decent earn out of licensing out the software and supporting it during elections.

We know actually that the software is developed in-house. The AEC does earn some money from licensing the software to other electoral commissions and from using it in union ballots etc.

However, I argue [pdf] that the code used for counting the Senate could be released, because no other election operates that way. What's more I don't think the AEC's competitive edge in the world of elections comes from their great software.