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[Australia] Government Adopts Linux, FLOSS for Voting

Submitted by Willy Smith on 3 November, 2003 - 17:01.

Story from wired.com (English)

While elections in the US are turning into porn movies, elsewhere in the world real progress is being made with Linux and FLOSS based systems. Here are some significant excerpts from the article:

'The system cost $125,000 to develop and implement.'

'[lead engineer on the product Matt] Quinn also believes that voting systems must use open-source software. "The keystone of democracy is information," he said. "You have a big problem when people don't have enough information to make up their minds or, even worse, they have misleading information and make up their minds in a way that would be contrary to what they would decide if they had the full story. "Any transparency you can add to that process is going to enhance the democracy and, conversely, any information you remove from that process is going to undermine your democracy."

'The machines are not what Quinn would call high-tech. The voting terminal consists of a PC and offers ballots in 12 languages, including Serbian and Farsi. The system includes English audio for vision-impaired and illiterate voters.'

'It has been widely reported that Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, one of the biggest U.S. voting-machine makers, purposely disabled some of the security features in its software. According to reports the move left a backdoor in the system through which someone could enter and manipulate data. In addition, Walden O'Dell, Diebold Election System's chief executive, is a leading fundraiser for the Republican Party. He stated recently that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.'' '

If you happen to live anywhere on this mostly harmless planet, please read at least the second page of this article.

Willy Smith reporting from Costa Rica

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Re: [Australia] Government Adopts Linux, FLOSS for Voting

Submitted by WorldWatch Reader on 4 November, 2003 - 13:55.

I have mixed feelings about the receipt issue. The last US Presidential election and Florida in particular, showed that paper is not the answer.

As long as we depend on a central governments to control our lives, we need some way of feeling out input is being handled in a meaningful way. In the U.S., you are generally offered two choices which, is tending toward a choice of a professional politician or an actor. This leads me to think that while voting systems are an issue a bigger issue may be finding a way to decrease the importance of such votes.

With a good electronic way to vote, it would be a lot easier to let the people, rather than the government make decisions. Referendums, for example, could be held on short notice with fair presentation of the issues through electronic means. I think it is time to discuss how technology can re-invent government.

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