LWN: Comments on "Bringing free software to voting booths"

Paper trail needed

jmason — Tue, 19 Aug 2003 01:11:33 +0000

Having worked with touchscreens -- and their attendant calibration issues -- I can only agree. I would never trust a touchscreen system, unless it verified afterwards the candidate *it* thought I voted for ;)

The best suggestion I've heard, is for paper ballots that are more easily OCR'd. The system for voting, and counting those votes, using paper ballots has been worked out over the years and is pretty foolproof and attack-proof, compared to the computer-based systems. But where computers *could* be used to speed up and simplify the voting process, is as automated counting machines -- which can be double-checked afterwards by humans, as in present recounts.

Bringing free software to voting booths

bradh — Fri, 15 Aug 2003 04:46:57 +0000

Software Improvements were (at one stage) teamed with Linuxcare - the Ozlabs team. A number of well-known software hackers were involved, including Andrew Tridgell.

Paper trail needed

frumious — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:20:42 +0000

Voter-verifiable paper trails are needed. You can look at them when the power is off, and you can verify that what you voted is what's on the paper.

See http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/2003/february5/dillsr-25.html

In my county (Washington County, Oregon), we're finally switching from punch-cards (with hanging chad) to paper ballots that are optically scanned, like nearby Multnomah County (downtown Portland) has been doing for ages.

http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/105999813873341.xml?oregonian?lcpl

The touch-screen machines look cool and seem modern, but I personally think they're just too risky to use, period, unless you add printers so that voters can compare the printed vote with their desired vote.

Using paper to start with is a lot easier.

Naming (OT)

hummassa — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 15:24:48 +0000

Just as a curiosity, his name is William Henry Gates IV. (or III? can't
remember)

Bringing free software to voting booths

Wout — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:51:14 +0000

I wonder whether free voting software would have made any difference in the Kim Yong Il case. A better example here would have been the US presidential elections where Bush was not elected, but became president anyway. From reading "Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore I gather that part of the Bush's cheating was through manipulating the voter registration software...

Bringing free software to voting booths

climent — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 07:15:19 +0000

Although in Spanish, JFreeVote is a already implemented, working solution for electronic vouting.

You might want to give it a spin.

Bringing free software to voting booths

Mithrandir — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 04:33:28 +0000

s/Kim Jong/Kim Jong Il/

The sans-serif font used in the cnn article made it appear "Kim Jong II". I understand that the practice of adding roman numerals after one's name to indicate how many other people in your family have had your name before you is a common practice in the U.S. I don't think it is anywhere else, except perhaps Western European aristocracy.

It seems a little unsustainable to me. 200 generations from now, are we going to have Bill Gates CCIII? :)

Bringing free software to voting booths

xanni — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 04:32:41 +0000

First a nitpick: I believe the full name of the North Korean leader is Kim Jong Il.

The Australian company Software Improvements won an AU$200,000 contract to develop Open Source voting software called eVACS based on Debian GNU/Linux, which has already been used in at least one election for the Legislative Assembly in the Australian Capitol Territory in October 2001 and is approved for use in future elections.

Regards,
Andrew Pam