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Government Open Source United States Politics IT

One U.S. Election-System Vendor Is Using Developers in Serbia (computerworld.com) 83

Posted by EditorDavid from the absentee-ballot-boxes dept.
The Open Source Election Technology Foundation is trying to move U.S. voting machines from "proprietary, vendor-owned systems to ones that are owned 'by the people of the United States.'" But in the meantime, Slashdot reader dcblogs brings this report from ComputerWorld: One major election technology company, Dominion Voting Systems, develops its systems in the U.S. and Canada but also has an office in Belgrade, Serbia. It was recently advertising openings for four senior software developers in Belgrade... Dominion said it takes measures "to ensure the accuracy, integrity and security of the software we create for our products...."

Alan Paller, president and director of research at the Sans Technology Institute...said that "one shouldn't feel complacent about maintaining software development and manufacturing all within the United States because foreign agencies have successfully placed technically competent spies on the payroll of American technology companies." But Suzanne Mello-Stark, a forensic computer scientist at Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a focus on voting machines, wants software and hardware transparency in voting systems. "The systems are proprietary and we don't know what the code looks like," said Mello-Stark.
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One U.S. Election-System Vendor Is Using Developers in Serbia More

One U.S. Election-System Vendor Is Using Developers in Serbia

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  • Why trust one or two people? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09, 2016 @09:47AM (#53041747)

    Serbian or American, the issue with electronic voting is that it's not transparent to everyone, and can be rigged by a very few.

    So moving the software to the USA, making it open source etc. won't guarantee the election is not rigged. Because the people voting on the day cannot check the machine is running the correct software and all the parts involved in counting are running the correct software.

    That's why there needs to be human verifiable items, like paper trails that can be checked by the person voting and the person counting and the candidates overseeing the count, and any interested observer....

    Proprietary voting machines, create distrust in the voting system and should be phased out, but 'open source electronic' voting machines shouldn't be phased in in their stead. Paper, human verifiable votes are whats needed.

    • Re: Why trust one or two people? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I can't understand why I don't walk into a voting booth, pick my candidate on a computer which prints out a ticket with all my info and who I voted for them on my way out I put the ticket in a secure box. Then the printed tickets are ALL counted like paper ballets.

      Then the computer verifies the paper and the paper verifies the computer. There is no way to cheat that system without rigging a massive number of computers and also somehow getting the people to count the tickets from any of those areas to lie

      • The only benefit of such a system would to get the result sooner than a full paper count and that benefit is quite moot considering that the effect of the vote won't take effect for a very long time anyway. You write that the computer verifies the paper but #1 there is no need to verify the paper considering how paper counts work and #2 wtf do you do if the two results differ anyway, all you know at that time is that there is a difference, not where it is.

        • The paper count is always the official one. If the counts differ, you have another set of humans count the paper votes. The computers are just there to make the people with no patience happy.

          • Well fuck the people with no patience :-). If we are talking about the US president, the vote takes place on November 8 then the electoral votes will not be case until December 19 and then on January 20 the newly elected President is inaugurated. So why does the no patience people need to know the result two months prior to it actually takes effect?
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Fraudulent votes from dead people, non-citizens, etc - voter fraud - is a red herring. It is quite unlikely to get worse because of electronic voting.

          The real issue is election fraud - where a small number of people can directly manipulate the election result data. Something like UPDATE votes SET selection = (SELECT id FROM candidates WHERE party = "Crony Capitalist"); Tho probably a bit more sophisticated - getting 100% of the vote always looks bad.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbn-o ( 555068 )

      That said, using software which voting device owners are free to run, inspect, share, and modify (free software) is critical because of other advantages. Voting districts should be free to make the software accommodate their needs as their laws change, and as unexpected situations develop. Proprietors know that voting districts are dependent on them and can easily reject modifications, raise the price of modifications beyond what the customer was initially planning to pay, and exact other kinds of harsh pen

  • Paper please (Score:4, Informative)

    by The Real Dr John ( 716876 ) on Sunday October 09, 2016 @09:58AM (#53041799) Homepage

    Proprietary machines and software have no place in a Democracy (or a Democratic Republic). But they have very important roles in a plutocracy.

    • Proprietary machines and software have no place in a Democracy (or a Democratic Republic). But they have very important roles in a plutocracy.

      Proprietary software can have its source code inspected and modified by its customers. It just requires a source code license rather than a binary license. It happens all the time. Open source is not the only way to verify and have control of the software.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Only when it comes to elections, the population are really the customer..

        • Only when it comes to elections, the population are really the customer..

          No. The customers are the government officials running the election. Citizens are users of this government equipment, the voting "machine".

  • The Open Source Election Technology Foundation is trying to move U.S. voting machines from "proprietary, vendor-owned systems to ones that are owned 'by the people of the United States.'"

    If they want Open Source, wouldn't it be "owned" by the people of the whole world?

  • Screw security (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday October 09, 2016 @10:28AM (#53041861)
    juicy gov't contracts should be creating jobs in America. Crap like this is the closest thing to socialism in America. Seeing it offshored when I know several competent programmers who are out of work (self taught guys, trying getting a job w/o a college degree and try going back to school in your 40s when tuition's $10k/year and you've got kids about to hit college yourself). Fuck them.

    • "Socialism" has a definition, and it's not "anything that rsilvergun doesn't like". Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with it.

      • Oh boy (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday October 09, 2016 @12:27PM (#53042395)
        Socialism is, by and large, the redistribution of wealth to ensure a minimum standard of living. Americans by and large want this but they're also very uncomfortable with it because they have puritanism crammed into their skulls when they're young (defenseless) children. This is why you see reports of white men overwhelmingly believing that a) the gov't caused all their problems and b) the gov't isn't doing enough to help them.

        So crap like the Military Industrial Complex and gov't waste is how we manage to get these sort of people to accept the help they need. Sorta like Ayn Rand living off Social Security at the end of her life. Well, exactly like that, actually.
  • We ought to have FOSS election software and hardware, and have a centralized VPN to avoid issues with open wifi connections. The voting machines in the US is horribly broken. Oh, and while you are at it just make a centralized biometrics database for the US and incorporate them in the voting machines.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Strider- ( 39683 )

      Or, you know, just do like we do in Canada and cast our ballots by making a mark on a piece of paper with a pencil, and then counting them by hand, under the supervision of representatives from each of the candidates who are listed on that piece of paper. Highly accurate, highly reliable, and very scaleable.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Kind of makes sense too, you know, a government of the people, by the people and for the people, should have people involved though out the election process. Making those votes and counting those votes. The only technology they should incorporate is to allow photos to be taken at the polling station where you get marked off the voting rolls, a face to go with every vote.

        The only reason to switch from manual to electronic pretty much seems to be all about scamming the elections and that is the only reason

  • Wonderful. The Serbians love Americans after the bombing of Belgrade. They'd never do anything to mess up a US election.

  • It's Diebold. (Score:3)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday October 09, 2016 @10:50AM (#53041945)

    Premier Election Solutions
    Formerly called: Diebold Election Systems, Inc
    Industry: Electronic Voting hardware, Consulting
    Fate: Acquired by Dominion Voting Systems

    -- wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

    The fact that they acquired them after they were disgraced speaks volumes.

  • US is about the get punked (Score:3)

    by voislav98 ( 1004117 ) on Sunday October 09, 2016 @11:21AM (#53042089)
    Yeah, this settles it, it's going to be a landslide victory for Trump.

  • I find it offensive that the submitter and editors emphasized that the software is made in Serbia and highlighted it in the title. They could have said "outside USA" but I guess when you say "Serbia" it sounds a lot more serious. Looking at some of the posts here I see that for some of you it actually does.

    Crooked software is made in many countries [theguardian.com]. Perhaps the choice of the company wasn't really based on where the company was based but the quality of service. There are many excellent software companies in

  • Dominion Voting Systems donated to the Clinton Fund. They were also one of the machine voting systems that appears to have irregularities.
    http://bit.ly/EJUSA_Democracy_... [bit.ly]
    http://www.caucus99percent.com... [caucus99percent.com]

  • Serbia will c l e a n s e you (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you want to purge the ethnically impure, use Serbs! Heroic at massacres of woman, children and unarmed men. Real heroes.

  • "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

    Spoken by some nobody, a J. Stalin.

  • Why does the US... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CanadianMacFan ( 1900244 ) on Sunday October 09, 2016 @06:59PM (#53044219)

    Why does the US have this fascination of trying to "improve" how people vote? There's all these systems to let people vote electronically, on-line, or through the mail. Heck, even with paper ballots the US has a history of trying different things. Just remember Florida, 2000, and chads.

    Marking an X next to the person you want to vote for has worked for a long time, it's simple, and doesn't need fancy new equipment which introduce new ways to alter the outcome of elections. The old system isn't broken and doesn't need to be fixed.

    • That's exactly why they keep changing it... to make it easier to rig.

    • I think it has a lot to do with the US ballot. In Canada we have exactly 1 question on the ballot. In the US, the ballot looks more like this [grassrootsne.com]. There is 34 separate questions on that ballot. This is the problem with the US voting system.

    • Voting should start at 12:01 AM Friday and conclude at 12:00 PM Sunday. Frankly, the election weekend should be moved to September to avoid winter weather ever being a factor.

      The ballots should be paper, the counting should be by hand in public view, controlled by non-voting or third-party people as neither the Tastycrat nor Fingerlican machines can be trusted with this task.

      Lastly: NO EXIT POLLING nor predictions before the polls close, period. The role of the Fourth Estate is to inform, not fucking sup

  • WHY NOT RUSSIA? (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday October 09, 2016 @07:15PM (#53044291) Journal
    Seriously, if they are going overseas and allowing others to manipulate our data, might as well make it Russia. At least you will get better code.

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