Even a chimp can write code

Saturday, August 28, 2004

An open source eVoting solution

Why not? I am amazed at the hubbub surrounding electronic voting in the United States - the most technologically advanced country in the world. Now I have written my share of software and know an insurmountable problem when I see one. But it stupefies me to see all these talking heads on television casting doubts on a voting process that befits the age we live in.

In October 2001, the Australian Capital Region put the Electronic Voting and Counting system to test in a real state election. The eVACS was an open source system running on Linux, subject to public review as well as an independent code audit. India - the world's largest democracy - has ably demonstrated the use of electronic voting machines in more than one election. Recently, the source code for the eVoting software used in Dutch elections was made available to the public.

Hopefully we are slowly getting closer to seeing the hundredth monkey.

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