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[Rowland Smith <rowland AT nc.rr.com>]

Paul Smith wrote:
> On Mar 12, 2004, at 10:03 AM, H. Wade Minter wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Thomas Beckett wrote:
> >
> > > Rachel Cox wrote:
> > >
> > > > Yeah, I'm not very excited about electronic voting at this point
> > > > myself. I'm eager for the time when I can be, but right now there are
> > > > just too many questions for me to be comfortable with it.
> > >
> > >
> > > Well in North Carolina at least, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  The
> > > paper ballot and optical reader system we now use (in Orange, Durham and
> > > Wake at least) works great, and there's a physical ballot and audit
> > > trail.  The ballot itself is simple and easy to understand.  I have even
> > > witnessed a local election recount on behalf of the Democratic Party and
> > > I think the system works well.  I would be extremely suspicious of any
> > > effort to replace this system with anything else.
> >
> >
> > The big problem as I see it is that the big voting companies like Diebold
> > are absolutely opposed to, and fighting tooth-and-nail to stop, any sort
> > of audit trail for their computers.  They want zero paper trail for their
> > voting.
> >
> > Why on earth would anyone who wants fair elections be so opposed to 
> > having
> > a paper audit trail?  That's what gets my suspicions up about e-voting.
> > They want to take an unproven system and remove any sort of 
> > non-electronic
> > accountability.
> >
> > Sketchy at best.
> >
> > - --Wade
>
>
>
>
>     To further a very good point, I'll add that I believe that a voting 
> system, electronic or otherwise, should not rely on anything that is 
> secret or proprietary at all. I can certainly respect Diebold's need to 
> protect their IP and internal processes from competitors, but the fact 
> of the matter is that the need for transparency in the voting process 
> far outweighs Diebold's business concerns. The internal workings, 
> software code, accounting systems, equipment inventory and history, 
> audits, reviews, records... all that stuff ought to be right out in the 
> open and subject to public and official scrutiny.
>     Maybe it's just me, but I wish our leaders were as vigilant about 
> fair and transparent elections as they seem to be about juiced-up 
> overpaid baseball players having an unfair advantage over non-juiced-up 
> overpaid baseball players.

I agree that any e-voting system should be both open-source and free, 
and should be designed to run on off-the-shelf hardware/os.  E-Voting is 
too important to be left up to commercial, proprietary, closed-source 
systems.  I don't believe that the evolution of our voting system 
shouldn't be left up to private companies with ties to political parties.

Here are a few links of interest:

   http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000330.html

   http://verifiedvoting.org/

   http://open-vote.org/


Rowland


> --P
>
> --
> Paul Smith
> Foundry Zero
> 919.834.5433
> www.foundryzero.com
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