I came across an interesting article in Network World, "Open Source: How e-voting should be done", by Paul Venezia of InfoWorld. It's a good survey and review of some of the arguments in favor of Open Source in the management, conducting and tallying of elections, so I recommend reading it. A couple of thoughts. Paul says:

"Another problem of current e-voting systems is that many still in operation provide no paper trail. Americans can't fill up their cars or access their bank accounts from an ATM without being prompted to print a receipt, but in many voting precincts, we can vote with nothing tangible to show for it."  (from Open Source: How e-voting should be done)

I have to say that I agree with this (at least for the next few decades.) It seems to me that with all the questions - some more legitimate than others - about election results, we need to preserve a brain-dead-simple way of doing a recount that everyone can understand, and it would seem that a piece of paper that can be re-counted is the way to go. Caveat: I know it's not really brain-dead-simple, and that conducting a recount of paper ballots can be extraordinarily complicated with lots of possible gaps and mistakes.

Paul further says:

"But the key to securing e-voting resides in making its systems open source. [...] It's time for us to make good on the promise of open elections and open our e-voting systems as well -- no black boxes, no intellectual property protections, no obfuscation, and certainly no backdoors. Doing so would require a federal mandate, one that would eliminate the use of closed source devices" (from Open Source: How e-voting should be done)

I (obviously) believe in the open source philosophy, and think it's an important way that we can improve confidence in our elections. But I don't think it's a panacea, or "the key" in any shape or form.

In fact I don't think in terms of 'the key.' There's a lot of room for improvement for sure. But there's also quite a lot more to even the technology side of elections than the software inside an optical scanning device.No doubt it's a complex, decentralized (both technically and in the way it is managed, operated and deployed.)

Check out the article and let us know your reactions too.