[governance] Open Source Voting Software Concept Released

[Paul Lehto]

Sure.  Open source inspectors could still be paid. But by whom? The
government? If so they are disqualified by conflict of interest since
the government's own power is determined by elections.  If paid by a
private party, they are not truly acting in the public interest even
if the claim to be...  Only citizen violunteers will truly
(potentially) act in the public interest, and only ON THE WHOLE -- not
individually.  And these volunteers just don't have the resources to
keep up with professional hackers.

On 10/27/09, Tapani Tarvainen <tapani.tarvainen at effi.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 04:54:43PM -0700, Paul Lehto (lehto.paul at gmail.com)
> wrote:
>
>> Given that, in an important election, a cheater or an insider can
>> economically justify spending up to billions of dollars in a
>> sophisticated cheating regime (given the trillions in spending that
>> might be controlled not to mention control of the world's sole
>> superpower if the election is for the presidency of the USA), how can
>> volunteers possibly keep up with that?  They can't.  Unlike other
>> scenarios where open source philosophy and approach can work
>> beautifully, it can't in elections.
>
> There must be some misunderstanding here.
>
> "Open source" does not mean or imply "non-professional" or
> "done by volunteers" or "not paid for" or even "non-commercial".
> It just means the source is in the open, available for everyone to see.
>
> And while that obviously doesn't solve all problems in elections, it
> just as obviously makes it at least a little harder to get away with
> poor software.
>
> Thus, I believe any election software should be open source, but at
> the same time it should be done professionally and paid for by the
> state, without particularly trying to save money thereby.
>
> --
> Tapani Tarvainen
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-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
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Ishpeming, MI  49849
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906-204-4026
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