California Interested In Open Source E-Voting Solutions

from the good-for-them dept

With so many problems with various e-voting systems, many have wondered why various state governments don't simply require any e-voting system to be open sourced. It makes a tremendous amount of sense. Any trustworthy voting process needs to require transparency in how the votes are recorded and counted. Letting a hidden algorithm do the counting makes no sense. Open source e-voting code would be open to scrutiny, and would almost certainly lead to fewer problems and greater security. Yet, for some reason, election officials have always bought into the e-voting vendors' false claims that open source code is somehow dangerous to an election.

It looks like that may be changing. California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, who has been a major critic of e-voting vendors, is now saying that open sourcing e-voting systems could help fix many of the flaws found in today's systems. It wouldn't solve all the problems, but it would be a huge step forward.

Filed Under: california, debra bowen, e-voting, open source

California Sues E-Voting Firm That Threatened California's Secretary Of State

from the vote-early,-vote-often dept

Remember how e-voting firm ES&S originally refused to hand over its source code to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen? And, then, when it finally did hand over the code, how it did so with a petulent, threatening letter, warning her that they would hold her personally responsible for any disclosure of ES&S trade secrets? In retrospect, it probably wasn't such a good idea for the company to include those threats -- especially when the company had changed the source code on some of their machines without telling the state or bothering to have the new software re-certified. After an investigation, California has now sued ES&S for giving the state uncertified e-voting machines. Perhaps those were the "trade secrets" ES&S was so worried about Bowen leaking out. Or maybe it was how ES&S machines have been found in some cases to count votes in triplicate or not at all. Or maybe it was the trade secret involving how the company knew its machines were buggy and prone to problems. Or the one about how it "forgot" to disclose, as required by law, the fact that some manufacturing took part overseas.

As for ES&S's response to the lawsuit, the company appears to have two defenses. First, it claims that the software changes were only "minor" so it didn't need to inform the state. Unfortunately, that's not what California law says -- and it's difficult to see why anyone would think that ES&S gets to decide what software upgrades are minor or not. Even more troublesome is ES&S's second response, claiming that this lawsuit "isn't in the best interests of California voters" because disabled voters won't be able to vote with ES&S's machines. Unfortunately for ES&S, this isn't about helping disabled voters vote -- it's about helping them (and others) vote reliably and accurately in a way that the state has certified -- and on that point, it appears ES&S fails.

Filed Under: california, debra bowen, e-voting
Companies: es&s