One U.S. Election-System Vendor Is Using Developers in Serbia (computerworld.com)

The Open Source Election Technology Foundation is trying to move U.S. voting machines from "proprietary, vendor-owned systems to ones that are owned 'by the people of the United States.'" But in the meantime, Slashdot reader dcblogs brings this report from ComputerWorld: One major election technology company, Dominion Voting Systems, develops its systems in the U.S. and Canada but also has an office in Belgrade, Serbia. It was recently advertising openings for four senior software developers in Belgrade... Dominion said it takes measures "to ensure the accuracy, integrity and security of the software we create for our products...."

Alan Paller, president and director of research at the Sans Technology Institute...said that "one shouldn't feel complacent about maintaining software development and manufacturing all within the United States because foreign agencies have successfully placed technically competent spies on the payroll of American technology companies." But Suzanne Mello-Stark, a forensic computer scientist at Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a focus on voting machines, wants software and hardware transparency in voting systems. "The systems are proprietary and we don't know what the code looks like," said Mello-Stark.

Comments

Why trust one or two people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Serbian or American, the issue with electronic voting is that it's not transparent to everyone, and can be rigged by a very few.

So moving the software to the USA, making it open source etc. won't guarantee the election is not rigged. Because the people voting on the day cannot check the machine is running the correct software and all the parts involved in counting are running the correct software.

That's why there needs to be human verifiable items, like paper trails that can be checked by the person voting and the person counting and the candidates overseeing the count, and any interested observer....

Proprietary voting machines, create distrust in the voting system and should be phased out, but 'open source electronic' voting machines shouldn't be phased in in their stead. Paper, human verifiable votes are whats needed.

Paper please

[The Real Dr John]

Proprietary machines and software have no place in a Democracy (or a Democratic Republic). But they have very important roles in a plutocracy.

Screw security

[rsilvergun]

juicy gov't contracts should be creating jobs in America. Crap like this is the closest thing to socialism in America. Seeing it offshored when I know several competent programmers who are out of work (self taught guys, trying getting a job w/o a college degree and try going back to school in your 40s when tuition's $10k/year and you've got kids about to hit college yourself). Fuck them.

Re:Screw security

[Zontar The Mindless]

"Socialism" has a definition, and it's not "anything that rsilvergun doesn't like". Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with it.

Re:Really...

[Strider-]

Or, you know, just do like we do in Canada and cast our ballots by making a mark on a piece of paper with a pencil, and then counting them by hand, under the supervision of representatives from each of the candidates who are listed on that piece of paper. Highly accurate, highly reliable, and very scaleable.

It's Diebold.

[Gravis Zero]

Premier Election Solutions
Formerly called: Diebold Election Systems, Inc
Industry: Electronic Voting hardware, Consulting
Fate: Acquired by Dominion Voting Systems

-- wikipedia

The fact that they acquired them after they were disgraced speaks volumes.

US is about the get punked

[voislav98]

Yeah, this settles it, it's going to be a landslide victory for Trump.

Oh boy

[rsilvergun]

Socialism is, by and large, the redistribution of wealth to ensure a minimum standard of living. Americans by and large want this but they're also very uncomfortable with it because they have puritanism crammed into their skulls when they're young (defenseless) children. This is why you see reports of white men overwhelmingly believing that a) the gov't caused all their problems and b) the gov't isn't doing enough to help them.

So crap like the Military Industrial Complex and gov't waste is how we manage to get these sort of people to accept the help they need. Sorta like Ayn Rand living off Social Security at the end of her life. Well, exactly like that, actually.

Serbia?!

[dejaniv]

I find it offensive that the submitter and editors emphasized that the software is made in Serbia and highlighted it in the title. They could have said "outside USA" but I guess when you say "Serbia" it sounds a lot more serious. Looking at some of the posts here I see that for some of you it actually does.

Crooked software is made in many countries. Perhaps the choice of the company wasn't really based on where the company was based but the quality of service. There are many excellent software companies in Serbia. Just check this out. And this, and this...

I get the point that voting software is too sensitive to be outsourced but if you're going to outsource it then software company based in Serbia is probably one of the better choices.

Re:Maybe they want EU customers?

[r1348]

Serbia is not in the EU.

You're thinking communism

[rsilvergun]

different things entirely.

Why does the US...

[CanadianMacFan]

Why does the US have this fascination of trying to "improve" how people vote? There's all these systems to let people vote electronically, on-line, or through the mail. Heck, even with paper ballots the US has a history of trying different things. Just remember Florida, 2000, and chads.

Marking an X next to the person you want to vote for has worked for a long time, it's simple, and doesn't need fancy new equipment which introduce new ways to alter the outcome of elections. The old system isn't broken and doesn't need to be fixed.

WHY NOT RUSSIA?

[WindBourne]

Seriously, if they are going overseas and allowing others to manipulate our data, might as well make it Russia. At least you will get better code.