Verified Voting Blog: Tinkering with Disclosed Source Voting Systems

In October, Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. ("Sequoia") announced that it intended to publish the source code of their voting system software, called "Frontier", currently under development. (Also see EKR's post: "Contrarianism on Sequoia's Disclosed Source Voting System".) Yesterday, Sequoia made good on this promise and you can now pull the source code they've made available from their Subversion repository here. Sequoia refers to this move in it’s release as “the first public disclosure of source code from a voting systems manufacturer”. Carefully parsed, that’s probably correct: there have been unintentional disclosures of source code (e.g., Diebold in 2003) and I know of two other voting industry companies that have disclosed source code (VoteHere, now out of business, and Everyone Counts), but these were either not “voting systems manufacturers” or the disclosures were not available publicly. Of course, almost all of the research systems (like VoteBox and Helios) have been truly open source. Groups like OSDV and OVC have released or will soon release voting system source code under open source licenses.

I wrote a paper ages ago (2006) on the use of open and disclosed source code for voting systems and I’m surprised at how well that analysis and set of recommendations has held up (the original paper is here, an updated version is in pages 11–41 of my PhD thesis). The purpose of my post here is to highlight one point of that paper in a bit of detail: disclosed source software licenses need to have a few specific features to be useful to potential voting system evaluators. I’ll start by describing three examples of disclosed source software licenses and then talk about what I’d like to see, as a tinkerer, in these agreements. The definition of an open source software product is relatively simple: for all practical purposes, anything released under an OSI-approved software license is open source, especially in the sense that one who downloads the source code will have wide latitude to copy, distribute, modify, perform, etc. the source code. What we refer to as disclosed source software is publicly released under a more restrictive license.

The Voting News Daily: Ballot Transparency Project for Arizona? Smartmatic does Mexico, Stopping MOVE Internet voting trojan

Arizona Election Transparency Project is seeking graphic ballot image scanning to protect against and expose fraud…Should the city of Aspen release the ballots from the spring City Council election to anyone who wants to see them?(the ballot images, which are already recorded)…Hawaii’s Chief Election Officer Cronin resigns, Hawaii plan would slash number of polling places….Judge won’t end NJ order targeting voter intimidation…More on NY-23 good and bad… OVF and Scytl Announce – The Power to MOVE: will this slow down or stop internet voting pilots/trojans in MOVE act and provide safer solutions?…Did Smartmatic mislead Mexican authorities, by presenting itself as a Dutch company?…

All this and more in today’s voting news below….

AZ: Ballot Image Scanning Sought as “Prospective Relief” in Pima County
As matters stand today, having strong evidence of election fraud is not sufficient to obtain legal remedy. Even if proof is obtained (such as a sworn statement that a computer operator had been ordered to rig the election and did so), a Pima County Superior Court judge has decided that the Court is powerless to act.
…
That’s why the Arizona Election Transparency Project (AZTP) of EDA and AUDITAZ, is seeking graphic ballot image scanning as “prospective relief” to fix what’s broken in our electoral process, and protect the integrity of future elections. Graphic ballot image scanning can reliably expose attempted election fraud, no matter what method might be used to try to cheat. The following short video explains how.
http://electiondefensealliance.org/eda-blogs/john_r_brakey/310809/ballot-image-scanning

CA: Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard
12/02/2009 The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to certify the county’s results from the November election, leaving anyone who feels they have a gripe a five-day window to request a recount or contest the final numbers.

But, before diving headlong into demanding and paying for a recount, Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich suggests anyone who thinks there may be a problem with the results to check for themselves with the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project.
…
The first-of-its-kind Transparency Project sends every ballot cast in an election through an optical scanner after it is officially counted. Images of the ballots are then placed online and available for download, allowing any member of the public to view, sort and count all the ballots in a given election as they please.

http://www.times-standard.com/ci_13906913?IADID=Search-www.times-standard.com-www.times-standard.com

CO: Aspen Times poll about releasing ballots
As of Dec. 02, 2009: Should the city of Aspen release the ballots from the spring City Council election to anyone who wants to see them?
http://aspenelectionreview.blogspot.com/2009/11/aspen-times-poll-about-releasing.html

HI: State elections chief announces resignation
Kevin Cronin, the state’s chief elections officer, has told the state Elections Commission that he will resign at the end of the year
…
The state Office of Elections was hit with challenges to an award for new electronic voting machines last year that has left the state with no voting machines for the 2010 elections.
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091201
/BREAKING01/91201075/State+elections+chief+announces+resignation
or use this url http://twi.cc/Oo8x

HI: Hawaii plan would slash number of polling places
HONOLULU — Hawaii’s chief elections officer on Tuesday proposed closing more than a quarter of the state’s polling places in response to deep budget cuts imposed by the Legislature and the state’s governor.