Open Source Program Reveals Diebold Bug 175
Mitch Trachtenberg writes "Ballot Browser, an open source Python program developed by Mitch Trachtenberg (yours truly) as part of the all-volunteer Humboldt County Election Transparency Project, was instrumental in revealing that Diebold counting software had dropped 197 ballots from Humboldt County, California's official election results. Despite a top-to-bottom review by the California Secretary of State's office, it appears that Diebold had not informed that office of the four-year-old bug. The Transparency Project has sites at humetp.org and http://www.humtp.com." Trachtenberg also points to his blog for the Transparency Project, and his own essay about the discovery and the process that led to it.
First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, Trachtenberg do you have a sister? And was she somehow the key to all of this?
I'll see you in court (Score:1, Funny)
Papers arriving shortly ...Esq.
Re:One area where open source will definitely win (Score:5, Funny)
In testing. You need to be able to verify the testing mechanism. Open Source will win there because of the ability to view and modify the code. Just verify that you are testing with the same stuff that you reviewed.
Live Free or Diebold!
Re:One area where open source will definitely win (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this? (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, but someone with several years of python experience could do this in less than 30 minutes. Just type import ballot_counter Although in Py3K they've changed the name to ballotCounter, just so you know.
Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this? (Score:3, Funny)
Mine too. After the OCR machine acknowledged my ballot was readable, they gave me a sticker that said "I voted".
I asked him for a second one and walked around all next day with two "I voted" stickers on.
Surprisingly, nobody asked me if I voted twice.
Re:Is Hanlon's Razor sharp enough to cut this? (Score:1, Funny)