Let's follow the Austalian model for electronic voting! Now!

[zulchzulu]

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/EVACS.html

It's Open Source electronic voting software that runs on Linux and was implemented in a year and a half in Australia. Take election voting software profiteering and corruption and bring it back to the government. Even if we could get local communities to migrate over this this type of electronic voting (along with a paper receipt), we would be on our way of taking our democracy back.

I'd like Howard Dean and others to put this on the fast track.

From the site:

Development of the EVACS system commenced as soon as the contract had been signed in April 2001, with the product successfully used at the October 2001 election.

More:

Electronic voting

The system deployed in each polling place where electronic voting is available consists of a number of "booth" machines, which are used by individual voters to cast their vote. These are connected via a network to a single "ballot box" machine which acts as a server for the polling place, recording votes as they are cast and providing information to the booth machines when necessary.

The machines in the polling place are not connected to any external network for security, and at the end of polling the votes are physically transported from the ballot box machine to the counting (back-end) system by zip disks.

Electronic counting

The back-end system consists of a number of data entry workstations and the counting server. The data entry workstations are used by data entry operators to enter manually cast (paper) ballots. These are recorded on the counting machine, which also receives (via zip disks) the electronic ballots. Once the ballots are received/entered, EVACS then performs a Hare-Clark scrutiny to produce the results of the election, and also reports similar to those produced during the manual counting process. The counting server is also used to perform some of the administrative functions needed for the system, such as generating the barcodes used for authentication.

[ArbustoBuster]

1. As a programmer, I really prefer old-fashioned paper ballots...

...but if we must use computers, open source is the only way to go.

[many a good man]

2. Let's get off our high horses

and pay attention to the ways other countries are solving the same problems we have. Its too damn important for us NOT to be analyzing lessons learned from other places and applying it here. Its nothing but arrogance. (Health care anyone?)

It IS possible to open up the software and lock down the hardware and guarantee trustworthy elections. Electronic balloting systems could provide exceptional benefits, we just have to demand it.

[zulchzulu]

3. If Australia can do clean democracy, so can we

It's a pity that we are walking right back into the same Diebold and BBV dishonesty in 2006 and 2008.