https://undark.org/2024/02/28/open-source-voting/
"While the vendors pitched their latest voting machines in Concord, New
Hampshire, this past August, the election officials in the room gasped. They
whispered, “No way.” They nodded their heads and filled out the scorecards in
their laps. Interrupting if they had to, they asked every kind of question: How
much does the new scanner weigh? Are any of its parts made in China? Does it
use the JSON data format?
The answers weren’t trivial. Based in part on these presentations, many would
be making a once-in-a-decade decision.
These New Hampshire officials currently use AccuVote machines, which were made
by a company that’s now part of Dominion Voting Systems. First introduced in
1989, they run on an operating system no longer supported by Microsoft, and
some have suffered extreme malfunctions; in 2022, the same model of AccuVote
partially melted during an especially warm summer election in Connecticut.
Many towns in New Hampshire want to replace the AccuVote. But with what? Based
on past history, the new machines would likely have to last decades — while
also being secure enough to satisfy the state’s election skeptics. Outside the
event, those skeptics held signs like “Ban Voting Machines.” Though they were
relatively small in number that day, they’re part of a nationwide movement to
eliminate voting technology and instead hand count every ballot — an option
election administrators say is simply not feasible.
Against this backdrop, more than 130 election officials packed into the
conference rooms on the second floor of Concord’s Legislative Office Building.
Ultimately, they faced a choice between two radically different futures.
The first was to continue with a legacy vendor. Three companies — Dominion,
ES&S, and Hart InterCivic — control roughly 90 percent of the U.S. voting
technology market. All three are privately held, meaning they’re required to
reveal little about their financial workings and they’re also committed to
keeping their source code from becoming fully public.
The second future was to gamble on VotingWorks, a nonprofit with only 17
employees and voting machine contracts in just five small counties, all in
Mississippi. The company has taken the opposite approach to the Big Three. Its
financial statements are posted on its website, and every line of code powering
its machines is published on GitHub, available for anyone to inspect."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-bus-drivers-contraceptive-implants/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
