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LA County Gets State Approval of New Vote-Counting System Using Open-Source Software (latimes.com)
A new voting system that uses open-source software for counting ballots has been approved by California elections officials. "The certification of the new tally system for the county paves the way for other improvements, including redesigned absentee ballot packets, in the Nov. 6 election," reports Los Angeles Times. "It is the first election system of its kind, using publicly available source code that has been certified for use in California." From the report: The ballot-counting equipment is part of a broader redesign of Los Angeles County's voting system, which will include new equipment while relying on a traditional paper ballot. The county's existing system, portions of which are now decades old, has been targeted for replacement for several years.
Being open source is less horrible, but there will still be plenty of opportunity of hacking. Most of this hacking is done by (elected) election officials, not Russians. And the Republicans are far better at it than the Dems.
Go for simple paper ballots. Counted in front of scrutineers appointed by the candidates. The scrutineers then report numbers back to their candidates independently from the official system, so no room for fudging.
This is what happens in Australia. And all the votes are counted by hand within a couple of hours of closing the booths. It is a quick and painless process.
I might add in Australia we also have a slightly more complex preferential system, where you order 1, 2, 3 instead of just one X. This avoids the vote splitting issues that the USA has. But it does require a population that knows how to count, even if they lived in a poor school district.
This is not about the ballot. If you read the summary, you'll see California is already using paper ballots. It's about what happens to the data after it leaves the optical scanner. How it's reported, tabulated, stored.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Is there an actual repository of actual code?
None of the articles (including in technical press) have mentioned where to find the alleged open-source software.
I found plans and progress reports and PDFs and PDFs, and more PDFs, oh, my!
Nary a source file. Nary a mention of language(s) etc.
Can somebody help me find where it is hiding?
Yes, I looked on GitHub. I realize it's not the only place to look, but the most obvious.
From a Pretty PDF:
"This should include making hardware components available for inspection, and source code to the
extent that the manner of doing so would not jeopardize system security or availability."
"available for inspection"? Is this like how your HOA makes documents "available for inspection"? Looking through paper documents in a cramped office with no air conditioning?
And that "extent and manner" means it is not open-source. If it is not ALL open-source (place don't point to passwords, etc. which shouldn't be in a source code repo) then it's not open-source. Period.