[governance] Open Source Voting Software Concept Released

[Paul Lehto]

OK, I can stipulate open source allows one to copy code and then add
to it.  But the only operations allowable in elections are specified
by law, either the laws of democracy or the laws of simple arithmetic,
and anything beyond that is either unauthorized or simply fraudulent.

Moreover, no matter whether open or closed source is used only experts
in computers can possibly know what's going on with them (but even
they will not, at least in USA, truly know what's going on IN TIME for
the statute of limitations for elections. THe Dept of Justice suggests
at least 6 months to fully investigate and make a charging decision on
a computerized election crime).  ALl such elitist or expert systems
are inherently undemocratic.  That's why in March 2009 the German
Constitutional Court, ironically using and interpreting a USA-imposed
(together with other Allied powers) constitution's requirement of
"public elections" decided quite sensibly that if the average member
of the public can't understand each essential step of an election from
casting to counting and tabulating, then it simply isn't a "public"
election, and therefore not a constitutional election.  Germany
reverted to hand counted paper ballots for both the June 2009 and
September 2009 Bundestag and EU elections, and the principles the
court laid down make it possible e-voting might be tried again, but
impossible, in my opinion, that any court in good faith applying the
high court's ruling would ever uphold computer voting again.  Full
transparency at every essential step, no expert knowledge may be
required, and no substitution of government "testing" or auditing for
any of the required transparency are the three key principles,
especially the last.

If one thinks about it, though the government is a ready source of
funding for testing, it is absurd for any entity or person to audit
themselves, investigate themselves or blow the whistle on themselves,
and similarly absurd for any entity including government to select
their own auditors, investigators and whistleblowers.   Sure, this is
done from time to time but in the most important of all possible
situations - elections - and in the most important times -- when we
need to kick out criminal incumbents for example -- we simply can't be
committed to computers and government-paid investigators unless we are
of a democracy-suicidal frame of mind.

So, all of your thinking is RIGHT on the "money" -- except for one
little but very important thing -- elections are so terribly unique.

On 10/29/09, Tapani Tarvainen <tapani.tarvainen at effi.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 09:27:00AM -0400, Paul Lehto (lehto.paul at gmail.com)
> wrote:
>
>> We agree voting systems must be as open as possible.
>>
>> My point, however, is that computerized systems can never be open
>> enough.  Yes, open source is better than closed, to be sure.
>
> So far so good.
>
>> As both voters and non-voters have incentives and motivations not
>> just to correct software but also to rig it, "opening" the software
>> to changes [...]
>
> Open source does not mean you let others change the code you run,
> only that they can copy it for their own use (and modify it there
> if they like).
> The quality of the code depends on the number of (good) people
> working on it, which isn't lessened by opening the source -
> it only means those working on it can get some extra bug reports
> from outsiders. They don't need to (and shouldn't) accept any
> code from untrusted sources.
>
>> I'm all for computers and open source in many contexts, but the
>> extremely unique considerations as applied to IMPORTANT elections that
>> are binding in nature militates strongly against their use.
>
> I agree there are strong reasons against computerizing elections
> in the first place, but not that open source makes it worse -
> on the contrary, I think it makes it better, if only by a tiny bit.
>
>> In the plane example above, opening the code to open source is only
>> making the problem worse,
>
> I don't follow. How is closed source any better?
>
>> since no volunteer can detect all double trojan horses and in any
>> case we've no way to know for sure if a volunteer's honest or if
>> they're a true computer genius, and in any event, even a genius
>> can't honestly certify they've detected all trojan horses in a piece
>> of software, and even if they could, there's no necessary connection
>> at all between the escrowed/tested software and what's really
>> running the plane in real time.
>
> That's all true - but doubly so with closed source, there the
> number of people who can analyze it is much smaller.
>
>> PS If you are of Finnish or perhaps Estonian descent, "moikka" to you
>> Tapani Tarvainen.
>
> I am quite solidly of Finnish descent, Finnish citizen,
> resident of Finland, and have been working actively
> to bury Finnish government's plans for evoting
> (fairly succesfully, too). :-)
> So "moikka" to you as well.
>
>> Harri Hursti of Finland stars in the movie "Hacking Democracy"
>> showing how to change an election given access to one voting machine
>> for about 5 minutes.
>
> Yes, I know him, he is pretty good.
>
> --
> Tapani Tarvainen
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-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box #1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026
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