Who knows what Diebold is doing with it?
The source code for all voting machines NEEDS to be freely available, and citizens need to be able to look at it. If the source code is not available, how can anyone be sure that the voting machine is doing what it is supposed to be doing?
And how can being able to look inside the voting machine in any way be a security breach? If seeing inside the operation of the voting machine is a security problem, we have given up on democracy. The whole point of the democratic election process is that everyone SHOULD be able to look inside every part of the voting process.
How can I be sure that my vote is being counted if I am casting it into a black box whose internal software is a complete unknown? As long as the voting machine is a closed mystery, how can we be sure elections are free and fair?
--scott
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No one can be positive on this at all. That's one reason I have never been too harsh with Diebold and thier work with elections. Either they can be trusted or they cannot be trusted. But beleive me you, coming from a background in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, in my lifetime I saw so many _totally outrageous_ things done in _supposedly_*fair* elections, I was thrilled to see the first sign of progress when they began automating elections. You want to complain about Diebold in elections? Why not complain about all the dead people voting and police officers who hang around polling places ostensibly to 'help' voters in Chicago with their choices? Election fraud did not begin with Diebold, believe me. The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners -- supposedly a non-partisan operation intended to secure the integrity of elections in that city -- turns a blind eye at the shenanigans which go on there intended to insure that the 'right' people get elected.
What about 'precinct captains' (little minature politicians with loud, yapping mouths who drive bus loads of elderly voters from nursing homes to the polling places) who then walk inside the polling places with their passengers while wearing their buttons or T-shirts telling for whom to vote? The rules about 'no electioneering within 100 feet of the polling place' mean nothing to them. By the way, when the polling place is inside a school or church, they start counting the
100 feet from the door of the room being used rather than the outside street entrance to the building. What about the television and radio stations who announce the winner the very _instant_ the polls close in the east, in effect discouraging the west coast voters from bothering to vote at all?No, I have no objection to Diebold as such; any automated and relatively secure (and 'relatively secure' is the keyword here) voting scheme is fine with me. After all, the computer does not care who gets elected, only people care. I saw way too much crap in manual elections in the past to worry that much about Diebold. At least with Diebold, if the intent is to have an honest election, the Diebold machines (if not rigged) will eliminate human error in vote counting, etc. Try voting in Chicago for Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and the three or four following, observe all the nonsense and see if you care. Scott, is your complaint about computerized elections in general, or Diebold specifically? PAT]