[governance] Open Source Voting Software Concept Released

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:20:11AM -0400, Paul Lehto (lehto.paul at gmail.com) wrote:

> 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.

I'm still not sure there isn't some confusion here.
In the context of election software, only another country
or other organization planning to do their own election
would have an interest in modifying the code for their use,
and its legality is up to their laws and has no bearing
on its use in wherever it's copied from.

Anyway, as I've already said, the modifiability aspect of OSS is
not important here, only the availability and visibility of the code.
And even that isn't all that important, for as you say:

> Moreover, no matter whether open or closed source is used only experts
> in computers can possibly know what's going on with them [...]

Agreed on all that, and indeed I just today sent a statement
to Finnish department of justice, which included just that
point, as well as stating that open source would not solve
the big problems in computerized elections, even though it is
in principle better than closed source.
(Our justice dept. doesn't like us very much in this context,
especially after we got their first attempt at evoting
to be declared invalid by our high court so it had to be redone
by paper ballots, but they did formally ask for our view on their
final report on the experiment. If you can read Finnish, see
http://www.effi.org/lausunto-sahkoisen.html or
http://www.effi.org/system/files?file=effi-sahkoaanestyslausunto200910.pdf.)

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

I think I've have a fairly good idea why elections are unique here. :-)
And I doubt we really disagree on anything substantive here,
the openness of the code being after all a minor point.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen
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