Surprise: Sequoia To Open Source E-voting Code
from the didn't-see-that-coming dept
Sequoia Voting Systems had been one of the "big three" e-voting providers, along with Diebold (Premiere) and ES&S. All three companies were notorious for massive amounts of secrecy and many, many, many reports of faulty machines with weak security. Sequoia's biggest problem -- which showed up in election after election after election after election -- was that it seemed to count the votes differently every time. That seems like a rather big flaw. The company also threatened computer security expert Ed Felten after the State of New Jersey asked him to look at Sequoia's code.Just last week there were reports that Sequoia had accidentally revealed some of its source code -- but this week Sequoia has surprised a lot of people by announcing plans for a new e-voting system which will have open source e-voting software included. The code will be released to the public next month.
This is definitely a big (and surprising) step forward. The Wired link above tries to speculate why -- but I'd argue the most obvious reason (not mentioned in that article) is that Sequoia's two largest competitors, ES&S and Diebold/Premiere merged last month, suddenly making Sequoia a much smaller player in the space (I believe it was already the number three player...). Going open source isn't just a way to improve its code and improve trust in the machines, but also a way to stand out against a much larger competitor.
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Filed Under: e-voting, open source, source code
Companies: sequoia
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They may also realize that they are just about to be majorly screwed after the code release, where it appears their code isn't entirely as per spec. They may be attempting to grenade the entire market.
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Watch...
No, they'll be gone because the ES&S and the McCarthy Group are well known for having large investments by Senators and Representatives. They'll magically become the "approved" standardized eVoting machine providers within two elections.
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Why is Sequoia Voting Sytems revealing eVote code?
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Web Design
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Re: Why is Sequoia Voting Sytems revealing eVote code?
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Re: Why is Sequoia Voting Sytems revealing eVote code?
People will try doing this to remove votes from those who they do not want to win.
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Open Source - Not
First, disclosed source is not the same as open source. From the linked wired article: "Open-source software allows the public to participate in the actual development of the software. Whereas Sequoia’s public source, or disclosed-source, software only allows the public to see software that its developers have already created."
Second, this would only be be for one of their machines (and perhaps only one version and perhaps incomplete at that). That is if it even happens, as I don't think they've set a release date. Duke Nukem Forever, anyone?
So overall, Sequoia seems to be a long way from actually going "open source" in any meaningful way.
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Re: Open Source - Not
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Re: Open Source - Not
I am also not surprised that they are doing it only for one machine at first. They are experimenting to see if it actually creates any advantages for them. I'm sure that if it does then we will see them follow this approach (and maybe even make it actually open source) for more machines in the future.
It may be a long way from ideal, but at least they are heading the right way.
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Fun with the article's title.
Did you mean: e voting
If you were to say the word "Evoting" aloud, it sounds different than "E-Voting" would.
But on second thought, Evoting wouldn't be a bad portmanteau for something that had evolution and took really any word ending in -ting.
Hmm. I could have fun with this title all day.
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Why do we need this?
Seem redundant to me. Now, if they had announced an open hardware platform for running existing open source voting software, that might have been interesting. But, while this might have been interesting 3-5 years ago, now it just smacks of desperation.
Chris.
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Web Design
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When it is goiong to happen?
Where is it? Am I missing it?
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Sequoia uses bad words... stolen code...
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