[Discuss] Govt Source Code Policy

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2016 at 12:32:55PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Apr 2016 16:01:39 -0400
> "Greg Rundlett (freephile)" <greg at freephile.com> wrote:
> 
> > It's WRONG that elections are not held on verifiable free software
> > platforms.  
> 
> Richard Stallman disagrees with you. About a decade ago, I copied him
> on a LUG thread about Free Software on voting machines. Stallman wrote
> back that NO computer software, and therefore no computers, should
> count votes, because any software can be tampered with. Voting and vote
> counting should be done the same way as before computers were invented.
> 
> After giving it some thought, I agree with him. I come from Chicago, so
> I know how easy it is to give President Kennedy 8000 extra paper ballot
> votes. Heck, my great great great grandfather still votes several times
> in every Chicago election. But compared to the
> never-discovered corruption that can be done by hacking software,
> ballot stuffing and hanging chad are minor inconveniences.

I'm perfectly good with the current method we use in Waltham: you
fill out your paper scantron ballot, you put it in the machine
yourself, the vote counter increments, and your ballot is saved
in the lockbox for recounts or verification.

It involves software, but not much.

-dsr-