CA Proposes Rigorous Voting Machine Testing

christian.einfeldt writes "During her successful campaign for California Secretary of State, newly-minted California Elections Czar Debra Bowen spoke repeatedly of the need to use free open source software in voting machines to ensure the integrity of California's elections. Now that Secretary Bowen is acting on that campaign pledge, closed-source voting machine vendor Diebold worries aloud that rejecting its black-box voting machines could snarl California's elections. Diebold's concerns come at the same time that it is suing Massachusetts for declining to purchase those same voting machines." Quoting: "California's elections chief is proposing the toughest standards for voting systems in the country, so tough that they could [have the result of banishing] ATM-like touch-screen voting machines from the state. For the first time, California is demanding the right to try hacking every voting machine with 'red teams' of computer experts and to study the software inside the machines, line-by-line, for security holes."

Mass Diebold request blocked

[mdsolar]

The request by Diebold to block Massachusetts from buying from another vendor was blocked: http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command =viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=hardware&articleId= 9014518&taxonomyId=12&intsrc=kc_top [computerworld.com]
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The proper use of a silicon ballot: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

Re:Yet another CA standard...

[QuantumRiff]

NO, CA emissions rules suck. Oregon and Washington are looking at adopting California's Emissions requirements. That would mean several freakish things. Namely, no personal Diesel vehicles. You cannot buy a VW diesel or a Jeep liberty Diesel in CA new. Diesels in the state of CA have to be over a certain weight. That is getting rather outdated. You can buy a 7000lb Hummer that burns gas like no tomorrow, tears up the highways with its weight (and even get a tax credit, since because of its weight, its considered a "business delivery vehicle) but I can't buy a VW that gets 55MPG burning biodiesel.