California Sec. of State Wants Open Source E-Voting Systems

Lucas123 writes "California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, was among a group of e-voting experts at MIT yesterday who said the nation's electronic voting systems are still not secure and many run on faulty software. Among the suggestions offered to fix the problem: use open source software, stop delivering e-voting machines to polling places weeks in advance of an election, and keep a paper trail for auditing purposes. Bowen also believes that a ubiquitous Internet voting system could not work without the use of a national ID card system."

Re:Simple Solution.

[Manulani]

Why would you use a high level operating system in a voting machine.... the code should be written in assembler.... with a printed record which is readable by humans and machines.

A serious question

[bill_kress]

It is supposed to be impossible for me to show someone how I voted. I can't be given a receipt or anything (it would be too easy to buy votes).

With that as a given, how does a paper trail help? If I as a voter can't be sure that my specific vote is the one on the paper, then it seems like there are still thousands of ways for someone to change it out.

The machine could print fake info first of all, so it would HAVE to be something I see and validate. Since it has to be a public record, it can't be tied to me by any kind of key though--so after it's printed it out for me to see, there is no saying that it doesn't print a second or third line for another candidate at some other time...

If the paper trail disagrees with the digital tally, do you just assume that the paper wasn't messed with or substituted?

I'm guessing people have thought about this more than I have, and I see the mention of "Paper Trail" a lot so I just thought I'd ask.