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[G-Flex]

Why open source? I agree that how they work should be a matter of public record, but you don't have to be all anti-copyright about it.

[Kay12]

I didn't say anti-copyright. I said open source.

[Heliman]

More voting fraud revealed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JScq7vkF_gk

[Virex]

Would an open source voting system make it easier to rig the elections? After all, open source systems often contain just as many bugs and weak points as closed source systems, but now anyone can find them...

[Kay12]

Would an open source voting system make it easier to rig the elections? After all, open source systems often contain just as many bugs and weak points as closed source systems, but now anyone can find them...

The reason I think voting systems should be open source is precisely that everyone can find the bugs and errors, present proof of them and request them to be corrected. I don't really see any downsides.

[G-Flex]

Okay, I think there's a breakdown in terminology here.

"Open source" generally implies not only that the code is viewable by anyone, but also that it's free for anyone to use or modify (often with some licensing attached). It sounds like you only mean that it should be viewable, though, and I agree to that; it should be a matter of public record.

Would an open source voting system make it easier to rig the elections? After all, open source systems often contain just as many bugs and weak points as closed source systems, but now anyone can find them...

If there are problems, then the people deserve to know about them. Also, if the workings of the machines are treated as secret and protected, that opens the door to completely untraceable corruption, especially when they're produced by large corporations who undoubtedly have political clout themselves.

[kaijyuu]

Hackers pretty much pride themselves on being able to figure out programs without the source, so just handing it to them won't help them all that much. And has been pointed out, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to fix potential holes.

[olemars]

In my opinion, keeping anything secret or closed about the inner workings of an electronic voting system is like holding an election and not telling people the rules.

They're testing out internet voting in some municipalities here this year, and it worries me a little. An important part of free and fair elections is that each individual gets to vote without peer pressure. When voting from home, nothing stops dominating relatives from hovering over your shoulder and making sure you pick the right party.

[Kay12]

"Open source" generally implies not only that the code is viewable by anyone, but also that it's free for anyone to use or modify (often with some licensing attached). It sounds like you only mean that it should be viewable, though, and I agree to that; it should be a matter of public record.

Uh, isn't that what's typically meant by "free software"? At least one of my free software activist friends always corrects me when I use the term open source for software with open source but not otherwise free licencing.

Wikipedia provides a very broad definition that isn't really helpful in determining whether "read-only open source" is commonly considered open source... whether that counts as access to source material depends on the definition of "access". (EDIT: Turns out that OSI uses nearly identical criteria to FSF, so I guess you were right)

For the record, some Finnish officials require some degree of openness from certain systems. In this case, the openness means that the code is free to read but not necessarily free to copy or reuse. Yeah, it may be a bit hard to enforce that "no"-part.

[Siquo]

More voting fraud revealed.

Hmm, and a year later this programmer is actually running against the guy he claims has rigged the elections.
This is too convoluted and has too many angles and conflicts of interest to be taken seriously, I'm afraid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Curtis

[Kay12]

More voting fraud revealed.

This is too convoluted and has too many angles and conflicts of interest to be taken seriously, I'm afraid.

Maybe so, but it's still disturbing. Whether his claims are true or not, it shows that something's wrong in modern politics

[Siquo]

Cheating is normal, allowing it isn't. I'm really glad I can still vote with a pencil and a piece of paper.

[Kay12]

Yeah, pen and paper voting is harder to rig and won't malfunction as easily... but for the sake of efficiency, I hope they'll manage to get really working electronic voting systems.

[shadenight123]

Yeah, pen and paper voting is harder to rig and won't malfunction as easily... but for the sake of efficiency, I hope they'll manage to get really working electronic voting systems.

meh, i wouldn't see it difficult to do such a thing. without even doing something program related.
you just place a server with NO connection to the net, nisba, not even half. or an inch.
like a big database.
you place one for each *voting place*
you place a monitor and ONLY a mouse.
so the input is just the mouse click.
the people you can vote for are on the screen. you click the one you want to vote, while someone, who stands in front of you but can't see your screen, looks what you're doing with your hands. so you can't use machineries of sort.
once it's done, you move all the databases to HQ and you make the counts there.
and the people who has vote rights present themselves at the pc the functionares have readied for them, after getting their data, so he's already logged in. and then he's auto logged off.
End of the problem.
 no internet, no hackers.
no extra machinery, no way to hack it.
i do believe it would end up being slower (do to having to set for each monitor the account name for the vote of the person) but even then, it's safe.

[Virex]

Yeah, pen and paper voting is harder to rig and won't malfunction as easily... but for the sake of efficiency, I hope they'll manage to get really working electronic voting systems.

Not at all. Those papers have to be hand-counted. Just slip a few of the counters a banknote and observe the results change.


Also, my experience with open source is the people only fix the bugs that are fun to fix and that a project needs a large user base to even get updates because nobody is going to work on something they don't use. Now, I may be misjudging here, but I doubt there are a lot of people that are going to dig through the code of a voting system every time an update is pushed. Unless of course they are looking for something that would benefit them personally (the normal reason to push an update).