Counting Every Vote  

After persistent allegations of vote fraud (particularly where electronic voting machines were used) in the last US Presidential election it will be interesting to see how things go this time round. Technology Review has an article on making voting systems open source, in order to add a little more transparency to the process (though to be sure you really need the machine to produce a paper slip showing the vote which can be recounted at a later date if required) - Counting Every Vote.

California's secretary of state, Debra Bowen, believes that open-source software should be used in elections involving electronic voting machines, to protect against error and fraud.

Speaking in Cambridge, MA, yesterday during a panel discussion at the EmTech organized by Technology Review, Bowen noted that individual counties are currently responsible for purchasing voting machines. Often the choice is left up to an IT professional who may lack detailed knowledge of cryptography and computer security. But the biggest concern, according to Bowen, is a lack of access to the machines' underlying code. "Many times, a person has no legal right to review the software, even if they could," she said.

Bowen has a history of pushing for greater transparency and accountability in election technology. After taking office in November 2006, she commissioned a top-to-bottom review of e-voting systems, including detailed analyses of source code, documentation, security, and usability. "All of the systems had security issues," Bowen said.

The study revealed a variety of problems, from software vulnerabilities that could let an attacker install malicious software that changes the outcome of a vote, to opportunities to tamper with the devices while they are held in storage.