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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 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.
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.