Do voting machines require open source?

[SagaciousKJB]

I just watched a documentary called "Hacking Democracy" which centered around the secrecy involved in electronic-voting machines and the software they used.

The documentary covers the investigations of Diebold, the predominant maker of electronic voting machines, after reports of their machines glitching began circulating and when the source code to their software was found on the internet through a public ftp site, and was found to be extremely vulnerable.

It leads on to cover corruption in the actual voting process, but I don't want to spoil it if anyone hasn't seen it. The main thing about it that I found kind of interesting after thinking about it, was that the sourecode for the software used in these machines is completely secret. Not even the people purchasing it have seen the source code.

It's amazing to me to think of a reason why it should be this way, and half-way through the program I thought to myself, "Maybe there should be a regulation to only purchase voting machines that run on Open Source software." Wouldn't that nip it right in the bud, or am I missing some part of the integral reason why these software solutions are secret in the first place? Why are we putting the democratic process in the hands of a company who simply wants to benefit, and has absolutely no responsibility to disclose the source code. I understand that there needs to be the machines and the software, and someone needs to develop it, but it seems to me the simplest solution would be to require any of these voting machines to use Open Source software. They could easily still compete and make money, and there wouldn't be such a huge issue of vote-fraud, security vulnerabilities, and pure glitches like discussed in this documentary.

I don't think you would to have needed to see the film to be able to discuss voting-machine software, but it would probably help to get a full idea of what's really at stake, and just how bad the problem is--though, I suppose you always have to take such documentaries with a grain of salt anyway. However, there's only so much you can leave up to credibility, and this documentary pretty much proves that Diebold is up to something fishy, when they found executable code on the memory cards that votes are stored on that can alter the outcome of the count. Diebold claims to have fixed all of this, but of course there's no real way of knowing that.

[carlosponti]

I dont so much think they should have to be open source because who at the polling entities is going to understand the code anyhow. However there should be allowed audits of the security whenever it suits them to make sure things are kosher and not being tampered with. Those security methods are allowed to be audited as well.

[bigtomrodney]

Added a poll for you guys....

[lucho]

They will be here in Brazil, by law.

[ls354]

The people in charge are the vendors which will say Open Source is a risk because anybody can look at the code and not the other way around because of their proven method "security via obscurity".

[cousinlucky]

I have spent many years as a polling inspector. The old mechanical machines require maintenence but they accurately count and tabulate the votes.

An accurate and uncompromisable electronic alternative has yet to be invented.

[Oxygen]

Neither, polling should be done through pen and paper. Too much to screw up. Especially with countries like Zimbabwe.

[Agent-X]

Neither, polling should be done through pen and paper. Too much to screw up. Especially with countries like Zimbabwe.

I agree. Some of this controversy relates to what happened when Bush was running for office. People said the older citizens did not mark the ballets "correctly," which I believe was total bull7!#$.

I think the obscurity of electronic devices creates too many problems. I think pen and paper is better. I know a lot of people care about this topic. I've seen photos of them sneaking up and watching the people in control of the ballets when they are moved from their location.