Public trust demands open-source voting systems
voting.works
Public trust demands open-source voting systems
1–10 of 292 posts
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#2Is paper considered open source?
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#3Is paper considered open source?
Yes and it's inner workings are 100% transparent.
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#4So they open the source ... how do I know that's what's running on the voting machine? There's really no good practical solution to this problem. What matters more is that there is a voter-verified paper audit trail and that this record is actually counted. At least by spot check risk-limiting audits, but ideally just count every vote manually to verify.
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#5* Opens Github repo
* Opens Cargo.lock [1] and pnpm-lock.yaml [2]
* Closes Cargo.lock and pnpm-lock.yaml
* Goes to find a Tylenol
At least with open source we can see the sausage getting made...
[1] https://github.com/votingworks/vxsuite/blob/main/Cargo.lock
[2] https://github.com/votingworks/vxsuite/blob/main/pnpm-lock.y...
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#6I would be fine if they had at least the same level of scrutiny as slot machines --- can we turn Citizens United around and argue that since dollars can be used to buy speech which influences votes, voting machine should have the same level of scrutiny/verification/auditing which applies to finance?
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#7Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#8Is paper considered open source?
Yes, and it's incredible how many problems are solved by hand-counted paper ballots. I get that it's a big task, that it takes time (and some US administrations seem to despise not knowing election results the night of the election), and that it's very tempting to automate, but the basic formula of 1) everyone gets a paper ballot; 2) the ballots are collected at a polling station; 3) the ballots are counted by hand is much harder to corrupt. Maybe build the fancy stuff on top of the paper ballot, like serialized ballots to prevent duplication or timed locks on ballot boxes to prevent tampering, but for the love of Democracy, keep it simple!
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#9The software doesn't matter that much. If you want to use voting machines, you need to create a paper trail with them that can be audited.
Auditing the software isn't enough if you can't reliably verify that this is actually what's running on the machines, or if the machines weren't otherwise tampered with in some way.
Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems
#10Is paper considered open source?
Yes, and it's incredible how many problems are solved by hand-counted paper ballots. I get that it's a big task, that it takes time (and some US administrations seem to despise not knowing election results the night of the election), and that it's very tempting to automate, but the basic formula of 1) everyone gets a paper ballot; 2) the ballots are collected at a polling station; 3) the ballots are counted by hand i…
Other countries get preliminary election results the same day even with hand-counted paper ballots. So even that isn't impossible.