No such thing as security by obscurity – the schematics and software of such a machine ought to be freely available. And there’s the snag… a company isn’t going to develop a voting machine of its own accord and then give away the intellectual property. So I’d say it’s up to a body such as the CSIRO to lead the way in moving Australians towards a 21st-century participatory democracy – a body that can freely spend money for the good of the country, with no commercial benefit expected.

Oh, wait, that won’t fly under Howard, will it?

Flash, in Australia, we should probably stick with the paper ballots. They’re at least standardised and tabulated by an independent, transparent and auditable body.

However, if we ever do get electronic voting, CSIRO is the outfit to build it, for sure. I’m sure they can find a way to secure the machine.

Security obviously wasn’t one of Diebold’s concerns. Hell, my current PC will raise an alarm and create a log file in the BIOS EPROM if you do so much as remove & reinstall the memory sticks… and I’m quite sure my P4 3.3GHz cost a lot less than a Diebold ‘AccuVote.’

Flash, in Australia, we should probably stick with the paper ballots. They’re at least standardised and tabulated by an independent, transparent and auditable body.
Whaddya mean PROBABLY? .. and who’s to say that the CSIRO (a government funded body) is not subject to pressure from Canberra. Has been known ..

True- CSIRO has been pressured lately, on global warming predictions, if I recall correctly.

The US has got about 15 times the number of voters as does Australia. Paper ballots are still practical here for the most part, though the optional preferential voting systems does make for a very laaaaaaarge ballot sheet.

I’d reason that this ‘bedsheet’ as it’s called locally, would be subject to invalidation by improper marking by confused voters, but the number of ‘informal’ votes tabulated by AEC is not generally out of the ordinary.

Still, I’d like an ‘expert system’ to advise me while I’m voting in Australia. I vote ‘below the line,’ candidate by candidate, instead of voting via any particular party. Easy to inadvertently spoil a ballot this way.

Now there’s this – the Diebold lock can be opened with a standard minibar/filing cabinet key. Duh…..

Heh, saw that covered on the Brad Blog earlier today. 😀

Elections secure as any mini-bar bottle of whiskey… that’s been refilled with tea… as you do. 😀

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