Open Source Voting Software Success 73
elhaf writes "The Open Voting Consortium has announced that they successfully demonstrated the Open Voting Process in San Luis Obispo this weekend. OVC received a request from San Luis Obispo County on the previous Monday to provide software to run their January 12 straw poll. By Friday, they had the software prepared and Saturday's event goes down as a great success for Open Voting Consortium and the cause of transparent election administration. They used Ubuntu and their code is publicly available. Surprisingly, counting ballots is not rocket science."
Re:Is it even worth protecting? (Score:1, Insightful)
Genetic diversity is what leads to a strong, resilient and intelligent population.
You elected someone because he looked just like your cousin cleetus, but "knowed how to talk a bit more smart" the last two times... and look where we are now... when will you learn?
Re:Are paper ballots involved? (Score:1, Insightful)
Any process can be subverted; paper-ballot elections were stolen through a large number of different means long before computers were invented.
Its pretty obvious when electronic ballots are used, too -- pretty much the same way that paper-ballot fraud is (pre-election polling being dead on except in precincts where machines from a certain manufacturer were used, counts for certain candidates in precincts above the total number of registered voters, etc.)
The media (and, following their lead, most of the public) may ignore these clear signs, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.
All of this is not to say that paper ballots aren't important: they are, because without them you've got nothing to reconcile a fishy-looking election too. And because of the long-history of paper-ballot fraud, we've gotten pretty good and protecting against the kinds of things that would mess up the paper trail, if there is a recount. We can't do that as reliably without paper. But we shouldn't pretend that paper-ballot based elections are somehow more pure, or have more obvious first signs of fraud. Short of going back and doing a recount, the signs of fraud are pretty much the same for paper ballots as they are for electronic ones.
How can you be sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Voting_thing.tar (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How can you be sure (Score:3, Insightful)