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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.
Damn - considering that every single major tech provider from Google through Facebook through...relies fundamentally on open-source software, the idea that our elections rely on - essentially - DOS-based, closed-source systems for every step from voting through counting is beyond bizarre!
Being able to look at the source is great and everything, but which actual bits are installed and configured on the machines is another matter.
Anything with a general purpose CPU shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the election system. A volunteer observer with a high school education should be able to verify, by simple inspection, the operation of any machine involved with counting/processing the physical ballots.
California leading the way once again. While Georgia is closing polling stations in majority-black counties, California demonstrates how to have fair and honest elections. And guess what? When the elections are fair and open and all the citizens get to vote, you get good government.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Agreed, the whole system is fully distributed, no reason to ever ever ever upgrade from paper ballots.
moox. for a new generation.
"Never trust a computer"....Says a guy who - besides posting on /. - probably does much more personally important stuff like banking, shopping, etc... ON A COMPUTER!!
What made you believe that California doesn't verify voters' eligibility? I'm not seeing support for your significant claim.
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.
Good grief, will we never learn? To make it truly unhackable, you use paper ballots, get about 50 people into the room, and count the damned ballots by eyeball. Not that hard.
While it is true that citizens are able to check a box to register to vote when they get their driver's license or state ID, the non-citizen versions of those IDs do not come with that privilege. Non-citizens are unable to register to vote and are unable to vote. But I can understand your mistake because conservative media leaves that incredibly important detail out when fearmongering.
You are correct in saying that San Francisco recently allowed non-citizens with children in school to vote in school board elections, but you are incorrect in suggesting that they can vote in more than just those school board elections. Details matter.
https://www.factcheck.org/2018...
This system seems nice and all, but what is LA County going to do to fix its voter registration rolls. Currently LA county has a 112% voter registration rate, which is obviously means some shenanigans are going on. Judicial Watch is currently suing California over this. https://www.judicialwatch.org/...