Stalin once said, "It’s not who votes but who counts the votes".
Currently, whether touchscreen or optical scan machine, how the votes are counted is ‘proprietary’ and a ‘trade secret’ so even Secretaries of State’s don’t know how such votes are counted.
Now a manufacturer has declared that their code will be publicly viewable; "Sequoia Voting Systems have announced their first transparent, public source voting system that will be available for public download as early this month!
This is a bold move for Sequoia, who has previously resisted this kind of public examination of their source code, and it will go far to increase transparency in our elections process.1
Now it’s time for their competitor ES&S to open up its source code to the public too."
And to remind people, ES&S has announced an effort to take over Diebold/Premier which an overwhelming amount of U.S. citizens use to vote. So besides the antitrust efforts which I hope others are engaged in, let me ask others to add their voice here to the demand for ALL voting systems to have open source code.
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Although this sounds great, the real problem lays in the whole voting system. That means not just the way we vote, how that vote is counted, and the results, but who we vote for and the selection of people we have, and the parties who decide who they are.
This is huge! Good on you for posting the diary!
This is the basis of the secret system of vote flipping it’s important and paves the way for the others. Now, If citizens could register on the day of the vote, we might be able to get rid of these vampires.