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Re: [News] [OSS] Scotland and England Against Proprietary Software in Voting

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Findings of the Open Rights Group Election Observation Mission in Scotland and
> England
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| The Open Rights Group cannot express confidence in the results for 
>| areas observed.
>| 
>| The Open Rights Group (ORG) believes that the problems observed at the 
>| English and Scottish elections in May 2007 raise serious concerns 
>| regarding the suitability of e-voting and e-counting technologies for 
>| statutory elections. E-voting is a ?black box system?, where the 
>| mechanisms for recording and tabulating the vote are hidden from the 
>| voter. This makes public scrutiny impossible, and leaves statutory 
>| elections open to error and fraud.
> `----
> 
> http://www.openrightsgroup.org/e-voting-main/
> 

You only have to look at diebold and all the errors and mistakes and
failures which dogged their voting machines to be able to see that the
*only* way of being secure here, is to have fully open machines.  There
is no other way of running elections.

> 
> Look how Microsoft took over New York to warn the state about the 'dangers' of
> a transparent voting process. They changed legislation too.
> 
> Microsoft Muscles the NYS Legislature
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Microsoft?s proposed change to state law would effectively render 
>| our current requirements for escrow and the ability for independent 
>| review of source code in the event of disputes completely meaningless 
>| - and with it the protections the public fought so hard for.
> `----
> 
> http://nyvv.org/blog/bolipariblog.html
> 
> 
> Related:
> 
> France to chose president with help of electronic voting
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| "Technology should only be introduced in elections if there is
>| transparency, accountability and public confidence," said Mitchell,
>| whose organization has monitored thousands of elections around the
>| world. "Technology must enhance democratic principles, not inhibit
>| them."
> `----
> 
> http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/17/business/evote.php
> 
> 
> Open-source project aims to erase e-voting fog
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| The project involved vendor Logica CMG, but was eventually ended.
>| The Dutch government decided to release the code under the GNU
>| GPL license after stripping it of its proprietary elements.
>| 
>| [...]
>| 
>| The back-end software, written in Java, will run on Linux or Apple's
>| OS X. The user interface, viewed through a Web browser, is "Google
>| simple," Kiniry said.
> `----
> 
> http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/16/HNevotingfog_1.html
> 
> 
> Congress finally considers aggressive e-voting overhaul
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| It bans voting machines that contain wireless networking hardware
>| and prohibits connecting voting machines to the Internet.
>| Finally, it requires that the source code for e-voting
>|             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>| machines be made publicly available.
> `----
> 
> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070401-congress-finally-considers-aggressive-e-voting-overhaul.html
> http://tinyurl.com/2c57o2
> 
> 
> Tougher Standards Could End E-voting
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| For the first time, California is demanding the right to try hacking
>| every voting machine with red teams of computer experts and to study
>| the software inside the machines, line-by-line, for security holes.
>| 
>| The proposals are the first step toward fulfilling a promise that
>| Secretary of State Debra Bowen made during her 2006 election campaign
>| to perform a top-to-bottom review of all voting machinery used in
>| California. 
> `----
> 
> http://www.asq.org/qualitynews/qnt/execute/displaySetup?newsID=1289
> 
> 
> Dutch FOI disclosures reveal the odd business of evoting
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| "The Dutch have had evoting for years, and it has always had pretty
>| lax monitoring. [After the hacks were broadcast] the government
>| got interested and started asking for checks on the software."
> `----
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/17/foi_dutch/
> 
> 
> Diebold Weighs Strategy for Voting Unit
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Diebold Inc. saw great potential in the modernization of elections
>| equipment. Now, analysts say, executives may be angling for ways
>| to dump its e-voting subsidiary that's widely seen as tarnishing
>| the company's reputation.
> `----
> 
> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DIEBOLD_VOTING?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
> 
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| "Nineteen machines had 21 screen freezes or system crashes, producing a
>| blue screen and messages about an "illegal operation" or a "fatal
>| exception error."
>| 
>| "Especially with this blue-screen problem, you don't know whether it's
>| the printer drivers, you don't know whether it's Diebold's own code or
>| whether it's Windows,"
> `----
> 
> http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6257
> 
> 
> Polling places turn to paper ballots after glitches
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Pennsylvania's Lebanon County also extended polling hours
>| because a programming error forced some voters to
>| cast paper ballots.
> `----
> 
> http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/07/voting.problems.ap/index.html
> 
> 
> Would open source make elections fair?
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| I will line up and use a Diebold voting machine, like everyone
>| else in Georgia, and hope that the vote count is accurate. But
>| that's all it will be, a hope. As last week's HBO special
>| revealed the machines and (more important) the system is both
>| closed-source and easy to hack.
> `----
> 
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=834
> 
> 
> Estonia votes via the Internet
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Eligible voters then receive ballots for their area as an HTML site on
>| their displays; an ActiveX or Java applet serves as the election client.
> `----
> 
> http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/85987/from/rss09
> 
> 
> Diebold quietly repaired voting machines
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| The unpredictable freezes don't cause votes to be lost, officials
>| said, but they confuse voters and election judges who sometimes
>| wonder whether votes cast on a frozen machine will be counted.
>| 
>| [...]
>| 
>| Diebold Election Systems quietly replaced flawed components in
>| several thousand Maryland voting machines in 2005 to fix a
>| "screen-freeze" problem the company had discovered three years
>| earlier, according to published reports Thursday.
> `----
> 
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061027/ap_on_hi_te/voting_machines
> 
> 
> E-Voting Raises New Questions in Brazil
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Some Brazilians are lobbying the tribunal to switch from Windows CE to
>| an open-source operating system for the voting machines, since Microsoft
>| Corp., citing trade secrecy, won't allow independent audits to make
>| sure malicious programmers haven't inserted commands to "flip" votes
>| from one candidate to another.
>| 
>| [...]
>|
>| Fontoura confirmed that Brazil is considering a move away from
>| crosoft's proprietary code -- "We are studying the possibility of using an 
>| open-source program like Linux in future elections. This would make the 
>| entire process much more transparent and far less expensive," he said.
> `----
> 
> http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060929/brazil_electronic_voting.html?.v=2


-- 
| Mark Kent   --   mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk          |
| Cola faq:  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/   |
| Cola trolls:  http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/                        |
| My (new) blog:  http://www.thereisnomagic.org                        |

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