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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.
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.
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.