Hi,
Thanks for sharing your comments with us Ed. I agree with most of
what you say, though being in the UK I am not directly concerned with
FEC guidelines. I however remain very interested in their conclusions.
I was interested in your support for 100% open code - Free Software -
as the only way to foster trust in electronic voting systems. However
your argument for open protocols as a stepping stone is flawed. There
are many open or semi-open protocols such as TCP/IP, Bluetooth, GSM
and so on which have resulted in a multitude of proprietry
implementations. Admittedly a Free Software implementation is more
likely if the protocol is freely available but it is clearly not
guaranteed.
Anyhow such a slow migration from open protocol to open software
isn't needed... the FREE project already has a totally open
electronic voting system released under the General Public License.
This software isn't perfect but any member of our community (or
anyone else for that matter) is free to contribute improvements.
I do not understand how companies such as election.com et al. expect
voter trust when they rely on security through obscurity - which we
all know doesn't work. Furthermore their code is closed - it cannot
benefit from the many eyes & ideas of the Free Software community.
Finally proprietry code may contain malicious, underhand or otherwise
undesirable code - who can audit or verify the code to prove this
isn't so?
I understand that these companies see a large market in the voting
arena but I would say (on behalf of the FREE project):
- Electronic voting based the e-commerce / web paradigm is fatally flawed
- There's plenty of money to be made off services and not selling
proprietry systems
All the best,
Jason Kitcat
--
the FREE e-democracy project
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http://www.thecouch.org/free/
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secure, private & reliable free software
