But probably too late for this year's election ...
The controversial decision to implement various types of electronic voting machines in place of paper ballots is garnering little public attention, while many states hastily implement flawed electronic voting machines and related election procedures, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation...
Criticism of the current crop of voting machines focuses mainly on the lack of clear requirements for a paper record of electronic votes. Part of this ongoing dispute is the disagreement between legislators and voting machine vendors on any procedure to oversee the programming of the proprietary, and thus secret, computer code that runs the voting machines. No open source program for voting machines yet exists.
...Many election experts concede that electronic voting machines will ultimately be mandated by both federal and state election organizations. That movement is already underway. Given that reality, could open source programming play a key role in solving the issues surrounding voter transparency and election accuracy?
"Absolutely, open source voting software could be used and should be used. There are two major issues facing open source voting software," said Almond. "First, no one in the U.S. has funded a project to build the software. Second, the voting laws across the U.S. are not sufficiently standardized to make the creation of this software practical."
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Something to never lose sight of: Voting machines, at best, reliably tally votes, but votes don't decide elections, only totals do.
If each of 100 machines tallies 200 votes for Moe and 300 votes for Larry, but the totals for that precinct give 10,000 for Moe, 15,000 for Larry, and 150,000 votes for Curly, then Curly wins by a landslide, even though no machine tallied any vote for him, and there were 125,000 more votes counted than votes cast.
The machines not only have to work reliably, but their tallies have to be copied faithfully, and the totaling has to work correctly all the way up the line.
There is no point wasting time on machines or their software if the entire system is wide open to wholesale fraud.
Posted by: Nelson Muntz | February 4, 2008 6:06 PM
Corrupt(ible) voting software is only part of the structural crisis facing US democracy.
Paper ballots, regular audits, competent and non-partisan voting management, instant run-off balloting, proportional representation, vigorous enforcement of improved campaign laws, independent redistricting commissions, campaign finance reform, restoration of the Fairness Doctrine, extreme media trustbusting, and abolition of the Electoral College might be enough to turn the present trends back towards something resembling democratic institutions.
Just to be safe, we should also remove from the judiciary all Bush appointees & appointers, jail Karl Rove and deport Rupert Murdoch.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | February 4, 2008 10:02 PM
Nelson, you must be from Boston. .. . But seriously, Mayor Curly never faked a vote in his life. Really.
(but really seriously, you are absolutely correct)
P. Butler: I'm writing your name in today. Butler for President!
Posted by: Greg Laden | February 5, 2008 6:10 AM
G. Laden: Thankew, thankew very much. Where would you like to be ambassador to?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | February 5, 2008 10:24 AM