John's Blog: Open-Source Voting Systems
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Open-Source Voting Systems
As promised, here's a review of the three US-based open-source voting initiatives that I have discovered so far.
The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of open voting systems for use in public elections. They are currently developing a prototype version of free voting software to run on very inexpensive PC hardware. OVC voting systems will accommodate different languages and scoring methods, as well as voters with special needs. A collaborative project is already well-established at Sourceforge.net.
The Open Vote Project is an open source effort to develop free software for Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. Based on the Australian System, where source code is freely published for public review, the Open Vote Project's initial goals are to make a touchscreen voting system fully compatible with California election law, including a voter verifiable receipt and easy access for the disabled. Once accomplished, the project will then expand into a global standard for secure, reliable, and full featured voting machine software, including features such as multi-lingual ballots, vote-anywhere technology, and onsite voter registration.
[A lot of good talk, and a very well-organized website-out-of-the-box to support the model, but still in the very early stages, and very scant content. Looks like it will be a while before anything concrete comes out of it. - John]
3. Center for Voting and Democracy / Voting Solutions
Statement: In the interest of easing the burden of administering ranked-ballot elections and of ensuring the integrity and accuracy of election software, the Center for Voting and Democracy is partnering with Voting Solutions to release Voting Solution's Choice Plus software under an open license.
The Center for Voting and Democracy is "dedicated to fair elections where every vote counts and all voters are represented. As a catalyst for reform, we conduct research, analysis, education and advocacy to build understanding of and support for more democratic voting systems. We promote full representation as an alternative to winner-take-all elections and instant runoff voting as an alternative to plurality elections and traditional runoff elections."
Voting Solutions "develops and markets ChoicePlus Pro, a cross-platform program used for counting preference style elections including Choice Voting (STV) and Instant Run Off Voting (IRV)." (Follow the links to see these terms explained.)
[This is an interesting effort, but involves more systematic reform than I'm looking for. I want something that will start making a difference sooner. - John]
1 comments
1 Comments:
wheres the review
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