Sat, 06 Nov 2004 16:27:33
E-voting…
The Internet, at least the left-leaning political corner, is abuzz with the Ohio e-voting machine that added just under four thousand votes for Bush.
First of all, I have asked this question a few times when it has come up, and the answer so far is “no.” The question is, has anyone bothered to look at errors as compared to traditional methods of voting? Is the e-voting error rate significantly higher? And the follow-up question is, has anyone looked around the country for errors that were in Kerry’s favor? Again, no, for what I think are two easy to guess reasons. One, it’s not a sexy story if the loser got a few extra votes here and there, and two, oh, that liberal media, who are licking their wounds after being named the real losers of 2004 and are looking for anything that can use against that bumbling hick who has embarrassed them yet again.
What we really need to is stop being assholes here and have a serious bi-partisan effort to force Diebold and everyone else out of the e-voting software business. Even if they did nothing wrong, and that may be true or it may be false, the electorate does not trust them. The government needs to open the e-voting process up and make it open-source so it can be checked by ANYONE with the time and skill to peruse source code.
Think about it this way: 15 years ago, CBS would have gotten away with airing fraudulent memos in an effort to sway a presidential election. They didn’t get away with it because some guys, in their pajamas, fact-checked their asses into a scandal.
We need that same power to come into play here. Geeks of all political persuasions will spend hundreds of thousands of man-hours checking every line of the voting code for free, making sure it is safe and secure and tamper-proof. No one will be able to get anything over on anyone because everyone will have access to it.
That not only seems fair and financially prudent...it seems downright American to me. Everyone gets a say. But it can only work if everyone who voted speaks together and demands it.
Posted by JimK at 04:27 PM on November 06, 2004
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#2 Posted by JimK 
on 11/07 at 02:16 AM -
david, true, but when you look at how secure most flavors of Linux are...it’s a strong argument in favor of opening it up.
We should not be using it until the majority of lead developers agree it’s secure. And in my imaginary scenario, the developers would not agree until the community at large agreed.
#3 Posted by Paul 
on 11/07 at 02:42 PM -
I have an idea which is totally revolutionary, and will solve all your problems. USE PAPER!
#4 Posted by LD on 11/07 at 10:19 PM -
Open source means the community can examine the code and find bugs and loopholes and fix them before an attack can exploit them. That’s the beauty of open source.
The dutch have open source voting software. There are also open source e-voting software movements in the US. Australia has open source voting software as well.
It’s really the best way to do it and the fair way to do it. Diebold’s software has been proven time and again to completely suck, yet it’s still used! It’s insane. This is typical gov’t BS.
And let’s face it, it WILL be better software than anything that’s out there currently.
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#1 Posted by davidst
on 11/07 at 01:54 AM -
there is a danger to open source though; attackers can study the code and learn best how to attack the system; where is the gaurantee that the code everyone on the Internet is looking at is the code running on voting machines all over the country?