An open-source voting system (OSVS), also known as open-source voting (or OSV), is a voting system that uses open-source software (and/or hardware) that is completely transparent in its design in order to be checked by anyone for bugs or issues. [1] Free and open-source systems can be adapted and used by others without paying licensing fees, improving the odds they achieve the scale usually needed for long-term success. [2] The development of open-source voting technology has shown a small but steady trend towards increased adoption since the first system was put into practice in Choctaw County, Mississippi in 2019. [3]
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Systems where more people can understand more of the process and get insights into details serve a similar purpose to election observers who help to inspire trust with increased transparency and verification. [4] Additionally, when 90% of the market of election systems in the United States, for example, are run by 'murky' and 'inscrutable' private equity companies, conspiracy theories can flourish alongside serious vulnerabilities. [4] With quicker identification and correction of issues than under proprietary systems, organizations such as the U.S. Defense Department and NASA opt to incorporate open-source software. [5] Cities, for example, can have their own staff work on software with the vendors when out in the open, allowing for faster patches and enhancing their election security. [6] The consensus among the information security community is that a widely-used open-source system should be more secure than a closed one, as more people tend to be willing and able to check for vulnerabilities. [7]
In addition to increased transparency creating more trust and security, open-source software can lower costs for elections. A VotingWorks bid in a Mississippi county, for example, was 50% less than the other vendors using proprietary software, [8] while its machines in 2021 were listed at 1/3 the price of the average machine. [4] Open-source software allows maintenance costs to be controlled via vendor competition (rather than dependence on just a couple vendors), and to be shared with other jurisdictions as they employ the software. [9]
Proprietary vendors are not transparent about their costs, estimates found that roughly 2/3 of their revenue came from support, maintenance and services. [10] Private vendors also have sued governments trying to switch to a more reliable process. [10]
In 2004, Open Voting Consortium demonstrated a "Dechert Design" GPL open source paper ballot printing and scanner voting system. [11] In 2008, Open Voting Consortium demonstrated the system at a mock election for LinuxWorld. [12] [13] In 2019, Microsoft made its ElectionGuard software open-source, which the company claims is used by all major manufacturers of voting systems (in the United States), [14] however they have come under fire for obstructing the adoption of open-source election software. [15] In 2020, Los Angeles County became the first U.S. jurisdiction to implement its own publicly-owned election system. [16] The Los Angeles attempt at open source voting was dismissed by Open Source Initiative as a failed project when it did not meet accepted open source standards. A condition of the Secretary of State's approval was to open-source the code by October 1, 2021, [17] but had not met that commitment as of February 2022. [18]
San Francisco applied to run a limited pilot in November 2022 using VotingWorks, but California's Secretary of State asked the City to resubmit their application when the nonprofit's ranked-choice voting module was closer to completion. [19]
Mississippi was the first state to have local jurisdictions use open-source voting systems to cast and count ballots. In New Hampshire, the towns of Ashland, Newington and Woodstock piloted that same open-sourced software system in the fall of 2022 with an eye to possible statewide adoption of VotingWorks' open-source systems by 2024. [20]
Open-source election risk-limiting audit systems have been implemented statewide in the U.S. states of Georgia, [21] Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia and in local jurisdictions in California, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington. [22]
In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and other computer programs to access hardware functions without needing to know precise details about the hardware being used.
Free software, libre software, libreware or rarely known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.
Electronic voting is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots including voting time.
Vote counting is the process of counting votes in an election. It can be done manually or by machines. In the United States, the compilation of election returns and validation of the outcome that forms the basis of the official results is called canvassing.
Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results. It contains the name of the candidate and symbol of the party/individual candidate. While it has gained in use in the United States compared with ballotless voting systems without it, it looks unlikely to overtake hand-marked ballots.
Election Systems & Software is an Omaha, Nebraska-based company that manufactures and sells voting machine equipment and services. The company's offerings include vote tabulators, DRE voting machines, voter registration and election management systems, ballot-marking devices, electronic poll books, ballot on demand printing services, and absentee voting-by-mail services.
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is available under a license that grants the right to use, modify, and distribute the software, modified or not, to everyone free of charge. The public availability of the source code is, therefore, a necessary but not sufficient condition. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software. FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users.
Linux-based devices or Linux devices are computer appliances that are powered by the Linux kernel and possibly parts of the GNU operating system. Device manufacturers' reasons to use Linux may be various: low cost, security, stability, scalability or customizability. Many original equipment manufacturers use free and open source software to brand their products. Community maintained Linux devices are also available.
In the context of free and open-source software, proprietary software only available as a binary executable is referred to as a blob or binary blob. The term usually refers to a device driver module loaded into the kernel of an open-source operating system, and is sometimes also applied to code running outside the kernel, such as system firmware images, microcode updates, or userland programs. The term blob was first used in database management systems to describe a collection of binary data stored as a single entity.
The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of trustable and open voting systems for use in public elections.
Proprietary software is software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modifying it, and—in some cases, as is the case with some patent-encumbered and EULA-bound software—from making use of the software on their own, thereby restricting their freedoms.
According to the Free Software Foundation Latin America, Linux-libre is a modified version of the Linux kernel that contains no binary blobs, obfuscated code, or code released under proprietary licenses. In the Linux kernel, those types of code are mostly used for proprietary firmware images. While generally redistributable, they do not give the user the freedom to audit, modify, or, consequently, redistribute their modified versions. The GNU Project keeps Linux-libre in synchronization with the mainline Linux kernel.
Protecode was a private company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada that provided open source license and security management software used for software development license compliance.
Linaro is an engineering organization that works on free and open-source software such as the Linux kernel, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), QEMU, power management, graphics and multimedia interfaces for the ARM family of instruction sets and implementations thereof as well as for the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA). The company provides a collaborative engineering forum for companies to share engineering resources and funding to solve common problems on ARM software. In addition to Linaro's collaborative engineering forum, Linaro also works with companies on a one-to-one basis through its Services division.
Linspire is a commercial operating system based on Debian and Ubuntu and currently owned by PC/OpenSystems LLC. It had been owned by Linspire. Inc. from 2001 to 2008, and then by Xandros from 2008 to 2017.
California Association of Voting Officials (CAVO) is a non-profit organization that works with community members and voting officials to develop open source voting systems for use in public elections. In addition, CAVO provides training and education to election officials for the effective employment of open source voting technologies and management practices. Utilizing proprietary software and hardware, current voting systems have been reported as being riddled with shortcomings and "...affected by critical flaws" in testing, certification, accuracy, accessibility, and security, while exhibiting a lack of transparency and conflicts of interest. CAVO 's intent is to develop secure and transparent voting systems to ensure accurate vote counts coupled with the utmost in security by utilizing free open source software and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) commodity components.
An election audit is any review conducted after polls close for the purpose of determining whether the votes were counted accurately or whether proper procedures were followed, or both.
Election cybersecurity or election security refers to the protection of elections and voting infrastructure from cyberattack or cyber threat – including the tampering with or infiltration of voting machines and equipment, election office networks and practices, and voter registration databases.
VotingWorks is a nonprofit organization that creates and sells open-source voting systems in the U.S. They currently have three products: one for casting and counting ballots, another, named Arlo, for risk-limiting audits (RLAs), and a third for accessible at-home voting.
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