John Edwards on Open Source Voting Machines

goombah99 writes "John Edwards, the presidential candidate and lawyer, is standing out from the pack by showing himself to be a bit tech savvy. In 2003 he was a guest host on Lawrence Lessig's Blog, giving his view on the imbalance between property right protection and the good of public access. As of this week he has become the first presidential candidate to support 'open source code' for election systems in addition to voter verified paper records. He's even personally using Twitter. 'Currently, software used in election systems remains the proprietary property of vendors. This situation has created a continual problem when anomalous results have been reported and independent experts are denied the ability to review how the systems work. A growing body of critics oppose this privatization of the voting system.'"

Open source election systems

[dn15 (735502)]

As of this week he has become the first presidential candidate to support 'open source code' for election systems in addition to voter verified paper records.

That's the kind of stuff I like to hear. Putting aside whether or not elections were "stolen" in the past (how can it be proven one way or another?) it's important to have as much transparency as possible in the voting system. That way we can at least reduce the likelihood of election fraud.

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[Holmwood (899130)]

Honestly, I'm not sure open source voting machines make a big difference either way. Don't get me wrong: the present Diebold mess (and others) is a disaster. And I agree with the parent, transparency matters. But process transparency matters even more than open-source transparency. Why? Because open-source systems have bugs and are eminently hackable. It might well be that open-source systems indeed have fewer bugs, and are more easily fixed. But an open-source system that isn't transparent in process is

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[dn15 (735502)]

I understand your point. What I was said regarding transparency was more about avoiding a "black box" where nobody knows what's going on in the back end. With closed-source electronic voting, we have to trust that whoever made it isn't stacking the deck in favor of a certain candidate, or hasn't written in a back door that allows the results to be changed at will. With accusations of stolen elections flying in previous elections, that's a lot of trust to put in a company's proprietary software.

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[caffeinemessiah (918089)]

Can we please stop getting all warm and cosy about candidates because they throw out "tech-savvy" words and we're supposed to be nerds? I find it more likely that Edwards is keen about open-source because the proprietary voting software is one possible scapegoat for his 2004 election loss, rather than open-source as a moral, ideological principle. The fact that he supports "open source for election systems" means crap because (a) it's in his own interest and nothing more (b) it's absolutely no indicator of

Re:Open source election systems

[dn15 (735502)]

Can we please stop getting all warm and cosy about candidates because they throw out "tech-savvy" words and we're supposed to be nerds?

I can't speak for anyone else, but personally I've been thinking we needed open-source election software (if we are to use electronic voting) ever since the whole Bush election debacle originally occurred. Am I supposed to not care when a candidate makes a statement in support of that idea? The fact that this idea also happens to be popular today with geeks on Slashdot doesn't make it wrong.

And yes, I fully realize he would not be in a position to mandate open-source voting kiosks even if elected. But it is reasonable to judge our candidates based on their views (in addition to their track records, of course), right?

Re:Open source election systems

[NMerriam (15122)]

congress makes laws, not the president...in case anyone forgot. sure, he can veto

Literally true, but when Congress and the White House are held by the same party, the President is generally the one who begins any significant initiatives, since he is the "standard bearer" of the party. Many of the major laws passed in the last 7 years have been written entirely by White House staff and then handed off to a sponsor in Congress. Presumably if a democratic presidential candidate wins, that will mean the democrats have at least held congress if not built an even more significant majority, so Edwards' opinion on legislative matters is hardly irrelevant.

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[bit01 (644603)]

process transparency matters even more than open-source transparency

The two are not mutually exclusive as you imply. We need both.

---

Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.

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[LaughingCoder (914424)]

... accusations fly that the company has embedded a mechanism to ensure that the shrub wins.

This is such an absurd theory, and yet it seems to be "accepted truth" around here. Think for one second. Who writes code? Here's a hint - it isn't upper level managers and company executives (ie those nasty Republicans). The only way something like this could happen is if low level employees (ie the engineers) were complicit. Do you think upper management *ordered* the engineers to make the code favor Bush, in whi

Re:Open source election systems

[Tim C (15259)]

Open source voting machines are useless, unless you can verify that the software and hardware in use at the time you cast your vote is trustworthy. If you can't, it might as well be a closed-source system.

Fragmenting the vote

[Umbral Blot (737704)]

Ah, fragmenting the geek vote I see. You know geeks could be a powerful voting block, if they could organize and officially support a single candidate. Unfortunately partisinship destroys this, and geeks seem willing to get in bed (so to speak) with whoever is willing to throw them a few treats (i.e. favoring Edwards just because he utterd the words "open source", not even in support of it in general).

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[TodMinuit (1026042)]

You know geeks could be a powerful voting block, if they could organize and officially support a single candidate.

Impossible. Have you ever seen an IRC flamewar? Imagine that, but magnified.

Re:Fragmenting the vote

[catbutt (469582)]

Actually, organizing to avoid fragmenting is what causes partisanship. Duvergers law [wikipedia.org].

Condorcet and/or approval voting solves this problem, but until we have that, we're stuck with partisanship and all the screwiness of plurality elections.

Re:Fragmenting the vote

[Dhalka226 (559740)]

You know geeks could be a powerful voting block, if they could organize and officially support a single candidate.

We can't, and shouldn't. Being a geek is only one small part of who we are as human beings. Technology issues are important to us, and in that sense we could all probably get together on who supports the positions we espouse the best.

The thing is, there are bigger problems going on in the world. We're literally at war. There's the "war on terrorism." There's the issue of things like the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There's immigration and visas. Of course on top of all these relatively new (or updated) issues, we have issues like education, health care, social security, civil liberties, privacy, economic policy, foreign policy, taxes, plus many others.

These are all far more important and far-reaching issues, and ones where there will be a lot of different and valid view points. We should vote for the person we believe best supports our entire range of issues, rather than trying to band together to support the biggest technology geek running for office at the time.

We should all vote our consciences in that regard. What we geeks should do, however, is band together on these technology issues where we mostly tend to agree and become an influential force on those specific topics, regardless of who we voted for in a particular election or who ended up in office.

Support AB 852

[mhale_85 (670144)]

I work for Paul Krekorian and I hope that all Californians here will call their state legislators and ask them to support AB 852, the Secure, Accurate, Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, a bill that would require disclosed source code for all election systems. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_n umber=ab_852&sess=CUR&house=B&author=krekorian [ca.gov] The bill is currently in Assembly Appropriations Committee and won't move until January, but it's a very important piece of legislation that we hop

e-Voting never replaces public auditable elections

[fluch (126140)]

It is a principle mistake to think that electronic voting can ever replace manual vote counting. Or if it will replace it, then you will always lose the audibility.

If you want an election to be publicly auditable, then the only (!!) way to do it is to count votes manually by hand in public.

You can use an electronic voting machine to get a faster preliminary result, but if you give up on manual counting the electronic voting machine will become a black-box. Regardless what kind of software, security etc. you use and implement.

Canada leads the way.

[Goalie_Ca (584234)]

How open source is it in canada? It is as open as it can ever get. It is done on paper. You get a pen and a piece of paper with a list of all the candidates from all the major parties and then some. It is all counted before the turn of the day and recounts are done within another. We've never had a problem.

Open Source dosen't matter for voting systems

[Datamonstar (845886)]

According to this [nist.gov] paper

Article in one sentence

[Actually, I do RTFA (1058596)]

the Edwards campaign stated that, "To ensure security, these machines should be programmed with an open source code for complete transparency, and election results should be safeguarded by voter-verified paper records."

I know RTFA is uncalled for, or even RTFS, but maybe if I put this quote in the comments section I can head off the "It needs a paper-trail *snort*" comments. Already, those seem to make up 35% of the comments. Ron Paul comments seem to come in second at 25%, and comparisons to Canada and bad jokes seem tied at about 10-15% each.

Re:Article in one sentence

[niceone (992278)]

election results should be safeguarded by voter-verified paper records

There's an article from nist linked somewhere up that page (open source doesn't help..), that says something I never thought of before: even if you have a paper trail, a compromised machine could still effect the result - by (for instance) placing a candidate's name in a hard to see place or somehow making it a bit harder to vote for them. Given the fact that quite a few people only decide who to vote for in the booth and are lazy, I could see this swinging a close race.

Not to say that a paper trail isn't a good thing, just interesting that it doesn't solve everything...

Can you really call it a Democracy with evotes?

[CrazyJim1 (809850)]

Maybe they can tout the closed source system as: Yes, one man can make a difference*.



*Must be a Diebold programmer to qualify.

Call me old fashion

[ducomputergeek (595742)]

While not impossible to forge and cheat, as they say here in Chicago: vote early, vote often, but I liked the idea of a paper ballot.

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[Propagandhi (570791)]

Pretending that the free market can solve every problem known to man is beyond naive. The worst part is that Mr. Paul acknowledges that the military can't be disolved, but won't apply the same logic to more serious problems of civilized man: health care and information access.

The airwaves and telephone networks would not exist without public land, pretending that allowing one corporation to own all that spectrum or all those acres of land is good for the consumer is ridiculous. The market forces do not ap

Re:You're wrong.

[Propagandhi (570791)]

He may know a great deal about health care, but I've never read an interview in which he didn't reply to that type of questioning with a non-sequitor about small government being better.

As for both Sicko and your article, neither settles this debate as both rely far too heavily on individual cases than generally applicable logical analysis. Obviously, such analysis is difficult to express sucinctly, but to me it boils down to this: The government is motivated by getting enough votes. When it comes to healthcare it can do this by keeping taxes low and/or by providing better service. On the other hand, the corporation's primary objective is to increase share price. Which it can do only by increasing profits. Profits can be increased by growing the corporation's income and growing costs at a slower pace or by cutting costs (or a combination).

The above are the facts of the situation, my decision is a result of a willy nilly hash of how I feel the shit breaks down in real life: The corporation, unable to grow itself at a rate faster than the economy (which it must do to add value) is forced to cut costs, even if this means worse healthcare. Rather than improve services it games the system to avoid losing market share. Thus, it fails to provide the same level of healthcare efficiency that the government CAN (note: not "does") provide.

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[Rich0 (548339)]

One issue with healthcare is the who-pays problem. If government offered free health care to anybody who paid at least $5000/year in Federal taxes there would probably not be an objection - most likely the level of care would end up being pretty high, and since so few people pay that much in taxes it wouldn't lead to a huge competition for treatment facilities.

The problem is that universal care means taking care of the 95% of the population who pay little to no taxes (comparatively).

The people who pay for

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[dbcad7 (771464)]

I like him better that Hillary or Obama. I liked him better than Kerry. Although Kerry didn't do too bad debating Bush, I think Edwards would have demolished him.. He's a smart guy, and a good speaker. I think the Democrats screwed up on the last election by going with Kerry over Edwards. I think he's the best choice of the Dems now, but they'll probably screw up again and pick Hillary.