What happened to Australia's wonderful open source-voting system everyone talks about?

It never was.

Aside from experiments aimed at the disabled and military , Australians fill out paper ballots as usual.

pmocek
"This is absolutely essential."
?
But if it is flatly impossible for a variety of reasons, which it is and which fact I shall proceed to prove in subsequent comments, then you're just following the old path blazed of ideology over science... just exactly as the last major voting "reform" effort did.

And we've had quite enough of the age of unreason, don't you think?

Explanations, references and links should and will follow such statements as I have made here... but I have no idea how this forum's software will react to lot of links so first a lot of hard data, knowledge gathered from the field, references, and links to a multitude of scientific studies can be found at
http://bradblog.com
and
http://blackboxvoting.org

to be continued...

This is absolutely essential.

John Argent said
"... does anyone realize it was not the machines that were the problem in FL it was the people not taking responsibility for properly voting?"

Are you aware that that is misinformation?

The GAO audit said no such thing... and in fact NO ONE has yet found a way to explain FL-13 that jibes with the known facts... no one at all:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5125

if you take the SAT in highschool the directions state completely color in the circle with a #2 pencil , an idiot puts a line thru it with a blue pin and fails because the machine cant score the test, who do you blame (popular answer the machine because nobody wants to admit to being an idiot)

I find this funny #1 leave it to the states - NO they are part of the problem -FL has an issue with voting machines and it throws the whole country into a tizzy, design 1 machine 1 set of rules and we all have to follow it. #2 the machines does anyone realize it was not the machines that were the problem in FL it was the people not taking responsibility for properly voting - continued

... continuing...

jesse_kocher said:
"The CTO can create a clear roadmap to get reliable, trustworthy, verifiable voting technology"

If by "voting technology" you mean EVMs that are reliable, trustworthy and verifiable then that statement is incorrect. In fact it's so flat out wrong it hurts to listen to it.

No, the CTO can't work miracles.

... to be continued...

... continuing...

jesse_kocher said:
"Optical scanners and other technologies have some problems as well."

Badly slanted. Op-scans *are* electronic voting machines (EVMs) and are as subject to malware and malfunction as DREs. The only difference is that there is an actual paper ballot left behind to manually recount... after the damage is done.

... to be continued ...

jesse_kocher said:
"Electronic voting machines are insecure, unreliable, and prone to a variety of problems that undermine trust in our elections process."

This is correct. From what you wrote about op-scans immediately afterward I assume you actually meant Direct Record Electronic (DRE) machines, most often known as "touchscreens".
to be continued

Consider this... if you all were to belatedly discover that this idea has roared up to #7 on the "most-wanted technology list" on the basis of a flatly impossible assertion... "The CTO can create a clear roadmap to get reliable, trustworthy, verifiable voting technology" ... what then?

Is further conversation and adjustment even possible in this venue?

Not only should the hardware and software for voting machines be open source, but they should be subject to the same auditing and certification procedures as for slot machines. See the sad disparity in our current systems: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/03/16/GR2006031600213.html

Rush Holt says it all in his proposed legislation. Whatever electronic technology you put in place, you need an independently auditable record of votes. A voter-verified paper record, along with common industrial quality control methods, provides the assurance the public deserves, and is simpler & cheaper than the complex, elaborate electronic audit mechanisms used in retail banking and gaming.

Do it like the rest of the world. A pencil and a scan tron . Cheap effective and for the rest of the world it seems to work.

This should be handled by the States, not the Federal government, it's the States that give us the right to vote in the first place (read the US constitution and then read your State's constitution, you'll see what I mean), so I'm going to have to disagree.

sll

It is certainly telling that banks can do this with ATM machines and the government with nuclear weapons can't.

The vote is the most fundamental underpinning of our democratic system. There must be faith in the system and that our votes are accurately counted and secure. Please make creating an open and verifiable voting process a top priority!

There are open source systems that are far more secure than those of commercial companies. A company has a financial interest in the outcome of any election and that's a dangerous conflict of interest. We need strong, reliable opensource system to be supported by the government (as in purchased, validated, and deployed).

A number of industry leaders (Google, Yahoo) and standards bodies (IETF) have already begun work and have made significant strides towards an open, reliable and secure system to enable electronic voting / ballots.

As it is with today's unreliable, hackable and secret method of eVoting, security through obfuscation is not an appropriate model for voting.

Please make this a priority.

we need this for 2010 congressional and senate races.

open-source optical voting machines that have a verifiable paper trail.

i hear it works in australia - please make this a top priority!