New Hampster, sorry, New Hampshire, will use open source voting software next week!

[thewayne]

Specifically, three towns will, and will hand-tally election results along side the open source software in verification. Should be interesting. Anyone who wants to challenge the result is welcome to hire a software expert to analyze the code and try to find problems that could be interpreted as vote flipping.

Now, this is not an electronic voting machine, this is a vote scanner or tabulator. People up there use paper ballots, which I think is the safe way to vote.

Pretty cool, IMO.

https://therecord.media/new-hampshire-set-to-pilot-voting-machines-that-use-software-everyone-can-see/

https://politics.slashdot.org/story/22/11/03/2155238/new-hampshire-set-to-pilot-voting-machines-that-use-open-source-software#comments

Comments

[dewline]

Seems like the way we do things in Ottawa, or at least matches what I saw: keep the hardcopy ballots in case of disputes re: the software, no matter what software/hardware you use.

[thewayne]

I think it's the best way to do things.  You can still end up with problems with badly-designed ballots, to wit the Bush v Gore problems in 2000, but at least you can't "hack the machine" if it's a paper ballot.

[silveradept]

Makes sense that a counter should be open source and auditable. Even better if basically all the people involved in the running of elections are nonpartisan and running open source software wherever possible. (And if we can't get enough technocratic nonpartisan people, then we should have them in partisan pairs that work together to ensure the other doesn't cheat.)

[thewayne]

My wife is working the election in Cloudcroft next week, and they do their best to ensure a balance of parties at each polling station.  She is definitely wanted as she's a registered Dem in a very conservative area.

[kathmandu]

Open source sounds better than commercial and un-inspectable.

[thewayne]

I think it's pretty awesome, the fact that it can be independently audited.  I'm hoping they have verifiable code hashes to prove it hasn't been tampered with, from what I know of the guy behind the project I'm pretty sure he does.

[disneydream06]

Minnesota still uses paper ballots too.
I think everybody should.
I think if I lived some where that used electronic voting, I would only vote absentee, assuming it was a paper ballot. :o
Hugs, Jon

[rain_gryphon]

Open source and paper ballots are absolutely the way to have an honest election.

[thewayne]

I think it's the best way.  But there's still problems with hand-counting ballots and getting totals to agree, surprisingly.  People are still a fallible factor, and it's a slow process counting literally thousands upon thousands of ballots.

[rain_gryphon]

They used to be able to hand count ballots overnight. And, at any rate, I'd rather have a correct result than a fast one. And yeah, hand counts will never 100% agree. That's unavoidable.

[thewayne]

My wife said that at her precinct they're not even counting mail-in ballots until Wednesday.  I'm not sure if that's county-wide, I guess it must be.  She's sent me a couple of text messages this morning, said it's an absolute zoo!  People out the door, massively exceeding the number of booths that they have!