In order to appreciate the benefits of open source software for Internet voting, it might be useful to look at one of the areas where it will have an impact, ie recounts. Recounts today generally consist of running a vendor's proprietary software on the same machine used for the election and getting the same results as those produced on election night...hopefully. Of course, if you run the same software on the same machine and get the same results, all you have demonstrated is that the software is counting consistently, not necessarily accurately. In short, there is no independent verification of election results by another system. With open source software, things are different. Open source software can be run with differnet compilers or on a machine with a different CPU and you should get the same results. (Some of today's voting systems use specialized compilers which could contain malicious code, for example.) Furthermore, because open software has been subject to public scrutiny, it should be trusted more by both the public and election officials. The point I am trying to make is that one of Safevote's security principles is based on diversity and comparison...diverse systems running the same open source election software should compare results and they should be the same. The current security model in public elections is based on security through obscurity and the principle of confinement; we play in one (private) sand box and it's the best one. Trust me. For more details about the flaws in the current security models, see the February issue of The COOK Report on Internet which contains an interview with Ed Gerck. http://www.cookreport.com/09.01.shtml BTW, I am speaking from over 15 years of experience in public elections, during which time I closely followed many a recount. Even when votes are recounted according to law, you can't know for certain if the election was honest. So this is one area where Internet voting based on open source software can raise the bar. Independent verification of election results is IMHO a good thing. Eva Waskell
