Thursday, February 01, 2007

Florida To End Touch Screen Voting


Florida Governor Charlie Crist is requesting the legislature provide funding to convert all of Florida's counties from touch-screen voting to optical scanners.

More paper does mean more accountability. The only problem? The HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy" demonstrates optical scanners are just as vulnerable to tampering.

The only real solution?

Open source. Now.

3 comments:

possum said...

Optical scanners traditionally cut down the Democratic vote. The Republicans will be in heaven with this change. How would open source voting work? You got any good links for it?

griftdrift said...

Open source refers to the code. Currently Diebold's software is proprietory meaning they are the only ones that get to view it. There is no reason to make it non-proprietory. First, their market is limited so it is doubtful it would assist competition. Second, it's a government license. We the public have the right to assurance it is quality. Third and most importantly, opening the source would allow thousands of developers to study the code and find vulnerabilities.

Diebold is saying trust us and our quality assurance. I don't.

possum said...

I see. Diebold means "devil" in Possum language.