OSS Election Systems Desired, but Not Ready

An anonymous reader writes "Even though many American voters are ready for open source systems at the polls, Newsforge (a Slashdot sister site) has an interesting story about why open source may not be ready for the polls. From the article: 'The only open source e-voting effort that Rubin [an e-voting expert] noted was the Open Voting Consortium (OVC). "I don't agree with everything they are doing, but they are all about transparency and open source," Rubin said. OVC President and CEO Alan Dechert says it would take a large investment of time and money to provide an alternative to traditional e-voting systems vendors, but he says an effort known as Open Voting Solutions (OVS) is looking to do just that.'"

open source software in voting?

[iamwoodyjones]

VOTER: "Okay need to vote...here we go...."

VOTER: "Huh, it's a command line terminal...Okay..."

Looks at people running the voting place

VOTER: "Excuse me. How do I vote....?...Uh huh...'ls'? Uh huh...'RFTM?' What does that mean...Oh I see. Thank you very much"

ls

VOTER: "Okay there's a file in here called README and INSTALL. I'll look at README first."

after some time...

VOTER: "Seams to be something about a pissed off guy named Richard and something he humps called a GNU...Okay. I'll take a look at INSTALL instead here"

VOTER: "Generic install instructions....something something something, configure....something something make? Okay worth a shot"

configure; make; make install

....
Checking for sed.....ok
Checking for awk.....ok
Checking for kernl...
........

30 mintues latter
Checking for libyourmom....ok
Checking for libkitchensick...Found Emacs....ok
Checking for ruby on rails....
ruby on rails not found...
ruby on rails not found.??
ruby on rails not found.??!!!!!!
RUBY ON RAILS NOT FOUND!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ruby on rails is the latest h4x0r dood!!!!!
Install Ruby rails AJAX0r!!!!

VOTER: "Son of a....!"

Re:OSS ready for the polls

[jaseparlo]

The (software|hardware) is only as smart as the person operating it.

The same could be said for democracy...

Re:Paper Ballots?

[TallGuyRacer]

As far as I can tell the only "downside" is that paper ballots are hard to rig elections with.

Exactly. That's why they are totally unsuitable for US elections.