ORG report

You can't have missed that ORG have release their report on this years pilots. Unsurprisingly they've declared them a 'threat' to democracy, couldn't have seen that coming could we? A few problems with their reporting method though:

• The outcome of the report had already been decided, i.e. eVoting bad.
• Individual reports on pilots are not available, instead we get the edited highlights, i.e. the juicy bad bits, no breakdowns on how each pilot fared. Guess we'll have to wait for the Electoral Commissions report before we get that.
• Makes recommendations for how to improve the process, whilst slamming the very idea, strange contradiction.

Something occurred to me whilst reading the report though. It's when Jason talks about Opt2Vote using .NET (no not on the client Jason, their solution is ASP.NET it's server side, but let's not let technical accuracy get in the way of a bit of good old MS bashing eh?) and bangs on about how Java is better, and then in a piece about auditing (about how there's no crypto that proves they were audited in the correct order, such as using dodgy hashing techniques). The two are subtle pointers towards... GNU.FREE! This fits with Jason's assertions that the process needs fixing whilst slamming the very idea... get the current round of pilots pulled and get GNU.Free involved.

Having said all that I'd have to agree that a more stringent testing and accreditation regime would be beneficial, perhaps Jason & ORG would like to put in some constructive comment on how this can be achieved? Unlikely.

And another one turns

Remember the site www.electronic-voting.org that I blogged about a while back? Well there must be something in the water as the author of that site has... guessed what? Devised an evoting system!

This makes the 3rd sceptic who's developing / distributing an evoting system, which seems to be a growing trend; attack the existing suppliers with your own product alongside.

Our friend Mr Kitcat has spoken up in defense of Emanuele Lombardi before, I wonder what he'd think of these lovely little lines:

The process for making such software is named ClearSoftware® and it is patented together with ClearVoting®

Since ClearSoftware® is patented, its details are not shown here

So Emanuele has come up with the perfect system for ensuring transparency and trust in a software system, but wouldn't publicly reveal details of it! I need to get me a patent like that.

Slashdot article

They've picked up a story I was going to post about anyway:

UK Voters Want to Vote Online

Some interesting comments in the story (bear in mind the majority of contributors are from the US, so they tend not to know about the odd bits of UK legislation):

"One of my biggest gripes about elections is how simplified the issues have become, and how difficult it is to understand what each candidate *really* stands for.IF they instituted online voting they could have drop down boxes for each candidate with summaries of opinions and hyperlinks to voting records, speeches... Hell, they could even link in the publically disclosed lists of contributors. I believe most voters don't have the time or inclination to do this sort of research on their own, but might be more inclined if the info was more easily accesible.A voter could spend all the time they like reading about each candidate and issue on the ballot *while* casting their vote.All it would take is some legislation and a bit of funding to amass the linked materials.Political spin would have a reduced effect on anyone with enough motivation to click a couple of links.Regards."

I turn, U turn

Jason's seems to be turning again. Despite eVoting being incredibly dangerous and a huge threat to democracy he's now posting links to OSS eVoting projects! (Shurely shome mistake?)

The article's very interesting, as it seems to contradict a number of arguments that Jason has raised, namely that of interception, alteration, co-ercion, receipts, etc.

I'll see if I can sniff out the source of this, could be an interesting read. But all in all a strange link for Jason to be posting... seems he only really dislikes non-OSS eVoting systems. I wonder if he'd be as positive if the source to a commercial system were released for peer-review?

ORG as observers

Still no word from ORG / Jason on which pilots they've been allowed to observe. They've been refused access to one pilot, which Jason seems reluctant to name (wonder why?).

One of the requirements for observers is that they're independent and impartial. Do ORG meet these requirements? They've already stated their clear opposition to electronic voting (although they haven't given me the clarification I was after), and now their activities are being funded by the same organisation that funds the LibDems. Independent and impartial? Maybe not.