Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

I think everyone outside of Diebold (and the dickwad politicians that take favors and kickbacks from them before purchasing all their equipment) agrees that the current e-voting system the states uses is stupid. Closed source, crappy and hackable code (as reported by those that have seen it), and the overall smell of a giant corporation that overwhelming supports one party with "donations" does not exactly instill confidence.

And, the whole "paper trail" thing most states are pursuing as a remedy is dumb as well. If the votes themselves can be manipulated, what in the hell makes you think the text printed on the paper cannot be as well?

Well it turns out that some in Congress are concerned about the overall e-voting situation and are considering making some real changes. Though I think 90% of the provisions in this new proposal are a waste of time (back to the paper "trail" thing, nonsense), one very significant item jumps out "Finally, it requires that the source code for e-voting machines be made publicly available."

That, I believe, would fix 99.9% of all problems. Open source is more secure. Over the years this has been a big debate, security by obscurity versus *actual* secure code, but the bottom line is that "real" security is better.

Taking it one step further I think every self respecting geek out there also recognizes that we should be allowed to vote ONLINE, not just electronically. The new proposal specifically prohibits any type of wireless networking or hooking of any election devices to the Interwebs. That response is borne of ignorance I fear. Sure there are security considerations once you connect to a public network, but that goes back to the same argument as the open vs closed source. Lets get the network security RIGHT, rather than just avoid it and leave the networking to county elections boards? If we all were issued certs from a central election authority CA, based on an OPEN STANDARD that anyone could code to, and those certs were used to sign our votes - and get this, we could look up online later to see the counts and our vote, no paper - then there would be no reason not to do this. All the bullshit with weather, timing, absenteeism and so on could go away. We could save a ton of money and hassle, and make actual secure systems at the same time. (And don't start whining that it cannot be done, billions of dollars traverse the Internet daily, in a secure fashion, votes could do the same.)

Anything is better than what we currently have, but it sounds like even this new proposal leaves a lot to be desired.